Tom Stine | Living as Consciousness » Best of Tom Stine

How the Spiritual Journey Began for Me

Tom Stine — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:00:49 +0000

Twenty-one years ago, I was feeling a bit sick much of the time, and so I decided to find a doctor who was interested in a more alternative approach to health, as I had just gotten interested in a more healthy lifestyle. Fortunately for me, C. Norman Shealy, founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, had his offices nearby, so I scheduled an appointment with him.

After a thorough examination that lasted over an hour, Norm and I sat down to chat. As we neared the end of our time together, he looked at me and said, “What do you believe in?” I had to ask him to repeat the question because, well, no doctor had ever asked me such a thing. I said, “Well, you’re born, you live, you die. Nothing before or after. No soul, no God, nothing. I guess you could say I’m an atheist.”

Norm looked at me with a kindly smile, and said, “About 5% of the population believes as you do. And that’s okay. But statistically, people who believe in something beyond themselves tend to be healthier and happier. The research is pretty clear on that score.”

Then, he absolutely floored me with what he said next: “I’ve examined you thoroughly, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t anything physically wrong with you. You are quite healthy. Yet, you feel lousy. If I were you, I’d get a spiritual life.”

I’ll never forget the next words out of my mouth: “How the hell do I do get a spiritual life?!”

Norm smiled at me, patiently explained that he didn’t mean go to church or anything like that, and suggested a few books that I should read. He seemed to know, somehow, that once he pointed me in the right direction, I’d be okay. And he was right. After reading his few book suggestions, I discovered the local new age bookstore, Renaissance Books, and went crazy, reading everything under the sun.

After reading dozens of books in the space of nine months, a set of 3 blue books kept catching my eye. I would pick-up one, read it a bit in the store, and then put it away, somewhat disgusted, because the books had all this Christian sounding lingo in them. After doing this little drill 4 or 5 times, I finally broke down and bought them. Within a week, I was hooked. A Course in Miracles became my spiritual path for 12 years as a result.

Strange how these things get started.

I’d love to hear your story of how you got started on the spiritual journey. I’ve turned the comments on for you to share.

Happy Holidays. Namaste.

The Half-Awake Dilemma

Tom Stine — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:00:41 +0000

credit:
topastrodfogna

A sure sign that you are a member of The Half Awake (Half Asleep) Club is the almost inevitable pair of questions that the mind loves to ask:

What do I do with this… this… awakening thing that has happened to me?

and

What do I do now (in general)?

Ah, the poor mind. Even when it gets it, it still doesn’t get it. I’m going to call these questions the Half-Awake Dilemma.

There is nothing wrong with these questions, by the way. As long as one has any identification whatsoever with the world, the body, the ego, the persona, anything in the manifest world of form, the questions will arise. And given that so many of us are still somewhat (or greatly) asleep, the mind will ask these questions, and, like night follows day, we will at times believe these questions are important and must be answered.

I’ve found myself trying to answer these questions any number of times. One or both will arise, I get a little hooked into it, and then I’m pondering, writing, researching, even surfing the Internet looking for answers. And each time one of these questions arises, each time I sit with one of them, I always come inevitably to the same realization:

What do I do now?

NOTHING!

Nothing?

NADA!
ZILCH!
ZIP!
ZERO!

Now, please, don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t fallen into the quite common non-dualist trap of looking at everything in the world and in a droning voice uttering, “there’s nothing to do, no one to do it, nowhere to go, and no one to go there.” Not at all. While these statements may ultimately be true, they are more often than not a convenient excuse for sitting on your butt and doing nothing all day. Not my point at all.

Implicit in many questions like “What do I do?” is one of the following two words: should or need. “What do I do?” is almost always the question “What should I do?”. The should is the key. If you will sit with the question, really look deeply into this word should, you will discover that should is a false dilemma, a lie that hooks you into an entire world of problems that need to be solved.

For instance, let’s look at a pretty ordinary example to see what I mean. Let’s take the statement, “I should exercise more.” A pretty common sentiment that many, many people share, and one that almost any doctor or health expert would endorse. But let’s turn it around and ask, “Should I exercise more?”

Here’s how to explore the question: well, if I don’t exercise, what will happen? Hmm… according to the health experts, I will have lots of horrible diseases, be depressed, and look terrible if I don’t exercise a lot, which I don’t do. But is that true? Will I suffer horrible diseases? Well, there have been marathon runners who have dropped over dead in their 30’s and 40’s, and sedentary slobs who have lived into their 90’s. So, that isn’t necessarily true. And be depressed? I’m not depressed now. Look horrible? I don’t think I look horrible as it is (you may disagree if you feel inclined!).

So, are any of these statements true? Can I know that I should exercise more? No, I can’t know. There are arguments for exercise, but there is no seeming necessity. Much different from “there is a bus about to hit me in 5 seconds. I might want to move out of the way unless I want to die.” Nothing as obvious as that.

I know this example is quite mundane, but it points out how quickly a bit of inquiry into the notion of should will quickly break down the very nature of it. Suddenly you are left with questions that have no real answer. Ultimately, after you’ve done some inquiry like this one with many other “shoulds,” you arrive at the only possible destination: you have no idea ever if there is anything you should do. It would seem, in fact, that there is no such thing as “should do” in all of existence!

You see, now that you’ve joined The Half-Awake Club, you are going to start moving through life in an entirely different way. There are no more shoulds, no more should nots, no more rules by which you must play. No, there is something new, something more interesting, and ultimately, something more vital.

Your doing will be increasingly determined by what I like to refer to as “those insistent nudges that keep repeating over and over again until you pay attention.” There is a nice word for this: intuition. Most of us, if we are honest, have had experiences that go something like this:

You feel an intuition to do X. But you don’t want to, or are afraid, or hesitant, or invent one of a thousand excuses. So you do Y. And Y doesn’t turn out the way you expected. Then you get this quiet insistence, this intuition, to do X one more time. But again, you are afraid, resistant, hesitant, or come up with 30 more excuses. And you do Z. Then A, then B, and unfortunately for you, B hurts. A lot. And so you pick yourself up, shake off the pain, and in the end, you say to one of your friends, “You know, I knew all along that Y, Z, A and B weren’t the right things to do. I’ve known all along that X is the better direction for me to go.” And you end up doing X.

Sound familiar? Yes, it does. And that is how you are going to live from now on.

One nice thing about these little insistent urgings, these intuitions, that help you see them clearly is that they never argue with you. They never offer reasons, they never debate, they never tell you bad things will happen if you don’t do what they suggest. They are quiet, subtle, and while insistent, are often gentle. But they never let up. They are persistent and insistent.

So, if you ask me, “What do I do with this awakening thing that has happened?” my response is: what do you notice arising in you? What do you feel at a subtle level to do? You will probably say, “I’m not sure.” To which I will say, good, fine, go sit on it some more. Don’t do anything. Come back in a few months and see what has arisen. Don’t worry. Life will show you.

Increasingly, I’ve noticed that doing nothing can be employed almost as a strategy, and it often works quite well. I get something that feels like an intuition, but I’m not sure. So I do something I never would have done 10 years ago: I wait patiently. And then lo and behold, things start to move in interesting ways. And before I know it, I’m doing the very thing I had the insistent urge to do, mercifully without all the painful false starts in the middle.

This process is exactly what has lead me to spiritual teaching, writing and working with people. You see, in some ways, I haven’t really wanted to. But there has been this urging for a long, long time. I’ve resisted, I’ve blown it off, I’ve held back. I’ve thought of dozens of excuses. For instance, I’ve told myself it is arrogant to do something like this teaching and writing thing. But in the end, the urging is still there. I’ve done Y, Z, A, C, G, H, L, and even R, but in the end, only X will do. Teaching keeps showing up whether I like it or not. And, fortunately, more often than not I like it. There is something deeply satisfying for me about teaching and working with seeming others.

Conversely, at times I’ve actually tried to dive into the teaching or working with people, thinking that since there was this nagging insistence then I should start teaching. Ah, there is that nasty should word again. I would end up feeling pressured, forced by the should, and then I would resist and fight back. Invariably, the timing was never right every time I jumped in because I should do it. Things never quite reached fruition. As the should fell away, more and more things opened-up for me, both inside and outside, and thus I find myself sitting here today writing to you.

I suspect that most people that experience awakening then experience this odd state of affairs. Interestingly, as I’ve discovered over the past few years, the majority of people who experience awakening never do any spiritual teaching. They live quiet lives of service doing many, many other things. Many don’t even do anything that looks like service. But nonetheless, their very presence is abundantly of service to mankind.

Perversely, many of these people will struggle with an egoic insistence that they teach while at the same time feeling that subtle urging not to teach but to do something else. And they must then go through the process of letting go of the ego’s insistence that they teach, just the opposite of what I’ve gone through. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it?

And thus is the Half-Awake Dilemma. If you are experiencing it, enjoy it as best you can. It gets easier and easier the more you open to the Awakeness that you are. Namaste.

More on Being Half-Awake

Tom Stine — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:34:45 +0000

credit: Indy Kethdy

By using the term “Half-Awake” I’ve probably given a somewhat false impression to many people. Saying half-awake almost implies that there are 3 states that a person can exist in:

Asleep
Half-Awake (or Half-Asleep)
Awake

However, as a few of you can attest, a schema such as this one would be grossly over-simplified and possibly inaccurate. Let me try to clarify a bit what I mean by half-awake and how it fits into what is experienced along the spiritual journey:

1. ASLEEP

The vast majority of humanity is sound asleep. When I say the vast majority, I mean to say 99.99% (and I may have left out a few 9’s). I don’t think I need speak too much about this part, because, well, everyone reading this article knows exactly what asleep is like. *grin* I also recognize that more than a few spiritual people will take offense at me characterizing the vast majority as asleep. I never said there was anything wrong with being asleep, because there isn’t. It’s just a phase consciousness appears to pass through. In fact, there really is no such thing as asleep, it is merely the appearance of asleep. More on that another day. However, asleep is what many, many people experience.

2. An AWAKENING occurs

For no apparent reason (really, that’s how it works out), a moment of “Ah-ha!” happens, a realization, a seeing through the veil of illusion, a moment of pure knowingness. “Ah, so THIS is what I am!” The delusion of separate identity is uncovered to be a lie. An awakening is like no other spiritual experience. It is not an experience, in fact. It is beyond all experiences.

In this moment of utter clarity, one knows beyond question that the “me” that defined them, the psychological sense of self, is empty, void, nothing. Instead, what you are is everything. And beyond.

Very often, an awakening is accompanied by the expression, “Well, I’ll be damned!”

That said, for the most part, an awakening is not permanent. It does not last. Some teachers like to use the expression “non-abiding” to describe this experience. The old psychological sense of self resurrects itself, and once again you find yourself being trapped by the very thoughts and beliefs that you had seen through. You know it isn’t what you are, and yet, there it is.

3. HALF-AWAKE

The experience I’m calling half-awake can take many forms, varieties and “percentages” of awakeness (although measuring one’s awake percentage would be silly and quite futile to say the least). But this half-awake state is what follows from above. A real, genuine awakening occurs, and yet the psychological self is still operating. You are able at times (quite often, in fact) to get lost again in the seemingly important thoughts and beliefs of the mind. You seem to be a someone who has many somethings “he” needs to do.

What I’ve noticed in my own experience, however, is that this experience of being half-awake has changed over time. I would speculate that what I’m calling half-awake is quite evolutionary, fluctuates and is not a single, unvarying state. It changes as one dives deeper and deeper into the mental structure and uncovers more and more of the belief system that held the asleep condition in place. It also changes because there is a natural movement inward toward greater and greater clarity.

After the first awakening, it seemed that I fell back asleep. I couldn’t forget what I realized, and yet, I felt somewhat lost again. And yet, much of my life was different. I couldn’t stay asleep for long without the memory of that awakened state touching awareness. It really was more a contrast between the awake state and my new half-awakeness. But after a month or two, it became apparent that “half-awake” was very different from asleep. There was a sense, however, of going “in and out” of awakeness, but never that full experience of awakening that I had.

In the past 6 months, something new has become apparent, something different from what I had been experiencing. Now, I can’t really say that I’m ever really asleep. There is no more sense of “in and out.” Presence, consciousness, whatever word you care to use for the reality of what we are, is always “just inside my perception,” if that makes sense to you. It is like I can see it just out of the corner of my eye. Not really, but that’s the sense of it. “It” is here, now, present, and doesn’t leave, even in the midst of being occupied by a thought, belief or problem. I’m never asleep, even though I’m not fully awake.

It feels as if I’m moving along a continuum, a line of increasing awakeness. On the far left of the line was asleep. Then came “awakening” followed by what I’m now calling half-awake, but in reality is still a continuum of awakeness. Maybe a diagram will help make this explanation a touch clearer:

4. ABIDING AWAKENING

Ah, here is the Holy Grail of the spiritual journey. I know there is inevitable disagreement about the meaning of every term in spirituality, but abiding awakening is what is most often meant by the “E” word, Enlightenment.

At some point along the way, no one can say when, no one ever knows when or how, something within simply ceases. The psychological sense of self, the “ego” as it is often called, simply goes from the foreground of awareness to the background. It becomes irrelevant. It ceases to be of importance. The Buddha knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Nirvana, for that word simply means “cessation.”

What you are no longer is caught in the mind. It knows itself to be what it truly is. There is no “you” anymore in any real sense. There is just experience. What you are simply is.

I’ll be honest: I can sense this cessation. It is present in my very awareness, a sense that something will drop away, something will completely give way.

In the past 6 months I’ve had further glimpses of this shift. I guess we could say they’ve been “little awakenings,” although I have no idea what that really means. They’ve simply been deeper experiences of truth, further realizations of the Oneness of all things, the emptiness of what I used to see as myself. As so many before me have explained, there is emptiness and Oneness, simultaneously existing, no contradiction.

In the end, that’s all there is: deeper seeing. Even once you have ceased, once there is the experience of abiding awakening, this is still not the end. The spiritual seeking and spiritual journey may have ended, but there is further clear seeing to occur. Consciousness, if it has a purpose, wants to continually see things more clearly.

That’s why in the little diagram above, I put an arrow on the right end of the line. There is simply a continual movement of seeing all things more and more deeply, clearly, fully. Consciousness growing more conscious of Itself through the body called Tom or David or Sarah or Ellen. If enlightenment is anything, this further clear seeing is what it is.

And as long as there is a body that you, Consciousness (for that is what you truly are), seem to inhabit, there will never really be an end to looking and seeing. As my friend Davidya pointed-out in an email to me, there is quite likely always some arising of the psychological self, even in one who is what we might call enlightened. But it becomes a non-issue, arising and in the same instant falling away. Nisargadatta and Adyashanti both spoke of this occurrence, too.

I hope the above clarifies a bit more this experience I am calling half-awake. I’m sure there is still more to be said, and I’ll be happy to share it with you. Thanks for reading. Namaste.

The Half-Awake (Half-Asleep) Club

Tom Stine — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:03:30 +0000

“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” — Groucho Marx

As I mentioned in a previous post, To Be Half-Awake (and Half-Asleep), my experience of spiritual awakening has been to be in a state that I am referring to as Half-Awake. Moreover, as I discussed, there are others who are experiencing this strange state, including some of you reading these articles (and I heard from quite a few of you after the last one). It is a far more common state than we might imagine, while at the same time, not the experience of the majority of humanity.

Moreover, it has been my experience that the majority of spiritual teachers and even “enlightened gurus” are fellow members of the Half-Awake Club. Unfortunately, many of these gurus and teachers have either flat out told their followers that they are fully awake, enlightened, or have simply left a profound state of ambiguity around the matter such that their followers have made bold claims as to the “enlightenment” of their guru.

Lest you get the wrong idea, there is nothing wrong with being a member of the Half-Awake Club. For the majority who awaken, being half-awake is just part of the process. It is simply part of the path. No big deal, no shame, no problem. Condemning people for being half-awake would be like condemning teenagers for being “half-adults.” Ridiculous to say the least.

The very nature of awakening is such that no one can be blamed or criticized for where they are on the journey. As a matter of fact, you have no control over awakening, over going back asleep, over fully awakening, etc. It is a gift, the supreme act of grace from the divine. I am very clear that I did nothing to experience an awakening (or any subsequent awakenings). They just happened. Really, I kid you not. I’ll address this point more in future writings. But as Ken Wilbur likes to say: awakening is an accident; all we can do is make ourselves more accident prone.

On the one-hand, I have to say that I don’t really care what other teachers are up to. It’s their karma, not mine. But on the whole, the mass of spiritual seekers have acquired some wrong-headed ideas about enlightenment and awakening, and I think we need look no further than the field of half-awake spiritual teachers for a lot of misinformation. Their own self-deception has led to some crazy ideas about reality and awakening to it.

To be honest, we have to admit it is a sad state of affairs out there in the spiritual world. There are websites like Sarlo’s Guru Ratings where you can read reviews of your favorite guru. There are other sites like Jody’s Guruphiliac whose mission is to reveal the “self-aggrandizement and superstition in self-realization.” Would we need or even have these sites if the spiritual world had its act together? I think not. (Warning: if you follow these links, prepare to read some harsh critiques of some of the best known gurus and spiritual teachers in the world. These sites are not for the faint of heart. Your favorite guru may get slammed.)

A little dose of self-honesty would go a long way in the spiritual world. And believe me, the gurus discussed on both these sites aren’t just obvious frauds and hucksters. There are some truly spiritual dudes out there who simply are unwilling to look in the mirror, be honest with themselves and with their followers.

There is even an interesting book, Halfway Up the Mountain, that seeks to address this very issue of Half-Awake spiritual teachers. The irony of the book is two-fold:

1. Most of the experts interviewed are in the Half-Awake Club.

2. They more or less condemn the state of being half-awake.

Again, to repeat in clear terms: there is nothing wrong with being half-awake. One can be a very effective teacher, helper, counselor, etc, from this state. A Course in Miracles makes this point quite well:

Do not despair, then, because of limitations. It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them. If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language. If you would be a savior, you must understand what needs to be escaped.

There really is too much to say about this subject for one article. I will get into this topic much more deeply in later articles as it gets to the very heart of spiritual awakening, what it is, how it flows, how it manifests in one’s life, how one’s life can change or not as a result of awakening, etc. And I’m also certain there will be the inevitable question: how do I know who is fully awake and who is not? I’ll just leave you in suspense on that one, with just this one comment: I don’t know for certain, but there are often telltale signs that one can look for, and even better, sense. A true light shines clearly for all to see.

Look for more in the coming weeks and months. Namaste.

To Be Half-Awake (and Half-Asleep)

Tom Stine — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:24:51 +0000

I am half-awake. Or half-asleep. Or even better, I am awake and asleep at the same time. It is a strange place to be, and I’m sure there are others who know what I mean. And I’m also sure there are spiritual teachers and writers who would say that such a state does not exist. But still, it is my experience.

What does it mean to be half-awake? The best way to explain it would be first to start with what being awake means. Being spiritually awake means the same thing as enlightened. I prefer the phrase “spiritual awakening” over enlightenment simply because it has less baggage associated with it. There is too much talk in the spiritual world about “enlightenment” and “enlightened gurus” for my tastes. And, as a bonus, awake is a nice description of what it feels like to awaken(although, to be fair, enlightenment really is quite accurate, too). It is almost the same experience as awakening from a dream at night. Almost.

Spiritual awakening, in its fullest sense, is the complete removal of delusion from consciousness. The Truth of your being, your reality as absolute consciousness, as the One consciousness that exists everywhere and is everything, is your natural state. For some inexplicable reason, the majority of humanity finds itself in what we could call a dream state, a state of consciousness characterized by a pervasive sense of individuality, a sense of “me” as a separate self, not connected to others, existing apart and alone from all other living beings and non-living things. Spiritual awakening is the reversal of this dream of separateness, a full, complete total reversal. Once one is truly awake, or as Jed McKenna would call “done,” there is no longer any doubt as to what you are and no tendency to re-enter the dream state of separateness. Even more, there is no “one” who is even awake, for the sense of individuality is gone. Consciousness has returned to a clarity, a clearness that is no longer deluded or confused.

Many people, although not that many when compared against the backdrop of 6.5 billion human beings, have experienced something rather profound, a spiritual awakening. They have experienced a realization of the truth of their being. They find themselves, for a moment, a minute, an hour, day, week or even year, as no longer this supposed separate self. They know at the depth of their core, all the way to the bottom, that the “me” they thought they were was merely a phantom, a psychological sense of self, no more real than any other thought, a figment of their imagination. And for that moment or hour or day, they are awake, utterly awake, as if they were never asleep in the dream state of delusion.

For most that have this experience, however, it doesn’t last. While much of the old psychological self, which many refer to as the ego, may have been blown out of the system by the experience of awakening, much may still remain. This psychological sense of self, the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc, that give it a sense of reality, has a certain weightiness, a certain momentum or inertia, that will continue to function after the experience has passed. And it may take many years for the inertia of this false self to wind down and eventually cease, like a pendulum that, once swinging, will swing and swing and swing until it finally comes to rest in perfect stillness. Cessation (the actual meaning of the term “nirvana”) is the eventual fate of the egoic self, but it almost always takes many years for that fate to come into full bloom.

This is the state I find myself in. Something happened to me that can only be described as miraculous, a gift from the divine. At some point, I will have to share that experience with you, because I think it might prove helpful to others. But as happens to the vast majority of people who experience a true spiritual awakening, the egoic self resurrected itself and came back in. I, too, experienced a pretty incredible “blowing out” of a lot of psychological baggage, but the material that was left came back with a vengeance! For over a year and a half, while there have been many amazing changes in my experience, there have been some old, buried items that have been raging in me at times, things I thought were over and done with 10 or 20 years ago.

There have been swings from fear to courage, from bliss to suffering. The dominant psychological pattern for most of my life, anxiety, has ebbed and flowed. While I became permanently free of panic attacks prior to this awakening, other forms of anxiety still plague me, and at the oddest times and places. All in all, I have to say it is simultaneously amazing and bizarre.

One of the hallmarks of the awakening process is the increasing inability to deny anything. You simply become incapable of hiding from any psychological issues that you repressed, denied or buried deep in your subconscious. You can no longer lie to yourself, and when you try, well, have you ever thrown a boomerang? The few times I’ve thrown one I’ve always ended up jumping out of the way of a rapidly spinning piece of wood itching to whack me upside the head. A whack upside the head is exactly what happens every time I attempt to lie to myself these days. What worked wonders 5 years ago is pointless, futile and outright foolish these days.

So, while I know the truth of what I am, while I can feel it, experience it, often see it in others, know it beyond question, I still am not fully aware of it yet. The description of enlightenment as “abiding non-dual awakening” is not my experience. Some days it is as if my awareness is on a roller coaster, going up then down, over then under and around. Moments of utter clarity then moments of delusion. And as I have come to realize, it is a perfect way to be, just as perfect as any other way of existence, lacking nothing. Like I said, it is strange.

Maybe a few of you are members of what I’m going to call the “Half-Awake (Half-Asleep) Club.” Most probably are not, and that is okay. It is a club that some of you will join soon, some will join at some point in this lifetime, and all of you are destined to join during some non-existent future life. Even a few of you may have “graduated” beyond the club. I’ll write more about the other members of this club in a few days, as there are quite a few of us. A sneak preview: most of the “enlightened gurus” and “spiritual teachers” floating around the world are fellow members. There is much to discuss about the strange existence I’m calling Half-Awake, and I’ll be saying more about it. Until then, I would suggest you read (or re-read) the article on Adyashanti’s View of Awakening…. Namaste.

Willingness Is the Key to Spiritual Awakening

Tom Stine — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:16:48 +0000

credit:
bortescristian

The further along I go with this awakening that has happened and continues to unfold, the more it becomes apparent that the real key to waking up is wanting to wake up. I know it is a radical idea, but it just so happens to be the truth of the matter. Technique is almost always given top billing in the world of spirituality, but the “how” will always come whenever you are truly willing. But willingness, that’s the crux of the issue.

You may already think you are willing. That’s why you meditate, read books by the spiritual giants, read this blog, talk to your friends about spirituality and awakening and enlightenment, go to retreats, all that good stuff. You have a very convincing case to prove how willing you are. But the truth is, if your willingness were electricity, you wouldn’t have enough to power a night light. A firefly could outshine you. Sorry, but it is true.

Look inside for a moment. Feel into this subject of willingness. Can you feel the resistance? Can you feel how much “you” don’t want to really wake up? Something inside of you knows this awakening thing is going to be different, really, really different, and it is frightened about that. Something inside wants to feel better about life, but it doesn’t really want what awakening entails.

Why not? Because the “something” resisting all of this, the “something” that is not willing to awaken, is the very thing from which one awakens! The resistance you are feeling, the UN-willingness, is simple the energy of thought, the “mind” as it were, resisting what is its eventual undoing. Well, maybe undoing is too harsh. Let’s just say that the mind gets to go from being the dominant player in your awareness to being second fiddle.

So there is a massive resistance to awakening. The natural question to ask at this point is “what do I do about it?” Ah, good question. But the question itself is just more resistance. Notice that the question is about doing and about “I”. The “I” is the very thing doing the resisting! The doing is how it resists.

Going beyond this resistance, becoming more willing, is the simplest of things: let it happen. What you are wants this awakening to happen. It is what is waking-up to itself. It IS awake, and is looking for this awakeness to transform everything. So, simply pause and let it happen. It will anyway.

As far as “you” are concerned, I think cooperation would almost be a better focus for the mind. Cooperate. Don’t fight what is happening. Give in. Allow. I think you’ll find this mindset to be a better one. It is far more in alignment with what is really happening anyway. Remember that whole “not in control” issue I’ve discussed many times? You aren’t in control, so why not just let that realization sink a little deeper. Cooperate with the inevitable, and you will find your willingness going up, up, up.

Be well. Namaste.

How Do You Know If Someone Is Enlightened?

Tom Stine — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:04:28 +0000

A reader sent me an email letting me know that a statement of mine in my last post I Want to Be Like Jed sounded like I was claiming that I’m enlightened. The line in question was a bit misleading, so I’ve changed it. However, the line in question did cause me to think of something that I want to share with all of you before heading to bed.

So, how would you know if “I” am enlightened? How would you know if anyone is enlightened? What’s great about these questions is that (1) they are questions that most spiritual people ask about various teachers and gurus and (2) they are so misguided as to be a bit comical.

First of all, you have absolutely no way of knowing if someone is enlightened or not. Period. No way. Zero. Zip. Nada. How can I be so utterly certain? Because you can’t know anything about another. All you can do is have an experience of them. You may have an experience of where their consciousness is at (ego or One, let’s say). You may see their behaviors. But to know if they are awake? Nope. I feel I have a pretty strong sense of where someone’s consciousness is at, where their “focus” is. But I could be seriously wrong. And beyond that? No clue. And moreover, I don’t really care.

Secondly, questions like this inevitably come back to some pretty fundamental things about enlightenment. For instance, who is it that is enlightened? Is Tom Stine ever going to be enlightened? No, he isn’t. Tom Stine is just a body and mind playing around in the dream state. But is Tom that which will ever awaken to the truth? No.

Then what does awaken? That which is already awake. Oh, isn’t this stuff just crazy to actually see in print? That’s why you gotta take all spiritual literature with a grain of salt. None of it is true. At best, it is an attempt at expressing some form of truth to encourage the reader to find out for himself or herself what all the fuss is about. Never take any of it as a statement of the truth. Find out for yourself what is true!

I think it was Yogananda who said, “Anyone who claims to be enlightened isn’t.” I don’t think he got it quite right. Better to say, “Anyone who believes he is enlightened isn’t!” For enlightenment is beyond any belief as it is beyond the mind.

Just some late night thoughts for you. Namaste.

You’re Not in Control

Tom Stine — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:26:29 +0000

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I’ve recently written quite a bit about the topic of control. Over and over, as I look at my life, as I watch others experience their lives, I keep coming to the same simple realization: we don’t have control over our lives. We are lived by something, a force that operates through our bodies and conditioned minds. We are lived by LIFE itself. And whatever “we” are goes along for the ride.

Interestingly, as I was in the midst of writing my recent posts on control, I got to travel to San Francisco to hear Adyashanti give a weekend workshop. And guess how he started his first talk? Yes, of course, he started discussing control. I smiled when he mentioned control that morning. It was a wonderful talk, and as so often happens, I remembered almost nothing from it, even though it had a profound impact upon me. A good spiritual talk is memorable for its effects, not for its words.

Fortunately for me, I ordered a recording of the weekend, and after it arrived the other day, I began to listen again to the talk on control. It was even better the second time! Let me share a bit with you:

You’re not in control, but your desperate efforts to keep control actually does alter the way existence moves for you. It doesn’t move in the way your controller wants to, but it does have an effect on existence, your effort to control it. It doesn’t have the effect you want it to have, but it does have an effect. And you only know that when that control is totally let go of. Because when it is totally let go of, and you are no longer putting that energy out to existence or to consciousness, then existence starts to change.

Yes, of course, our efforts to control do effect the events of our lives, but not how we want them to. That explains so much. But as we let go of attempting to control, life then begins to flow. Ah, yes, perfect. It makes complete sense to me. Nothing to be but let go of one simple false belief: that we have control over our lives. So easy to say. So ~~difficult~~ ~~fun~~ interesting to do.

No Control, No Control, No Control

Tom Stine — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:44:27 +0000

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It seems to me that blogging tends to come in 2 basic flavors. One flavor is where the blogger writes big, long, complete essays on a topic. For the most part, my articles have been of this type. The other flavor has the blogger firing off short, to the point items. These posts never try to be complete, but they nonetheless often communicate something vital to the reader. I’m going to start experimenting with these types of posts. And here is the first one for you.

When you get right down to the nitty gritty of spirituality, you find a very stark realization staring you in the face. And that realization is: you are not in control of your life. “What?” you ask. “How can that be?” Well, just pay attention to one very simple “fact” of your existence thus far: how often do things go your way? From the big to the little, from the important to the trivial, how often does life cooperate with your thoughts, ideas, plans, goals and beliefs? Not looking so good, is it?

We like to think we have control, or we like to think that we have at least some control, but in point of fact, we’ve got none. Hell, we can’t even control the thoughts that flow through our minds, let alone the turning of the wheels of life. And, to get right down to it, there isn’t even a you who is or isn’t in control! How’s that grab you?! No you, no control.

So, who or what is in control? What if I said no one? Or what about everything, the totality of Life? Same thing, really.

I know that this may sound scary to some of you, and downright crazy to others, but the simple truth is this: life has only gotten more delicious and fun the more I’ve come to accept the truth that we have no control. Much like a surfer riding a wave: you have no control over the wave. Your only job is to enjoy the ride! Namaste.

Riding the Leading Edge

Tom Stine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:44:09 +0000

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When I ride on a roller coaster, I love to ride in the front seat. Everything seems to happen right now when you sit in the front. I put my arms up, of course, no holding on, no matter what the coaster does. Upside down, slammed to the side, you name it. It’s just more fun to be on the leading edge of the experience, arms up, come what may.

I realized recently that this same attitude is very important to take with life in general. Especially with thoughts and feelings. We usually “ride” our thoughts and feelings, especially our unpleasant feelings, in the back seat, as far from the leading edge as possible. We hope that the unpleasant ones will simply go away, and if we sit far enough away from them, maybe they will. But they never do. All feelings will keep returning until they are experienced fully.

More and more I’ve had the experience of moving to the front seat and experiencing most of my feelings and thoughts head on. While I can feel everything more powerfully, and some things seem a little more frightening, the whole experience feels more alive and interesting. It feels almost invigorating. I feel like I’m on the leading edge of my life, and it feels good.

In many senses, being on the leading edge is what awakening is all about. We wake-up from riding on a roller coaster with our eyes closed, holding on for dear life, sure we are going to die a horrible death. And we awaken to the realization that the sun is out, the coaster is flying 90 miles per hour, we are strapped in and loving the ride, moment to moment, in the front seat.

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The leading edge. That sums it up. We are like surfers, riding the leading edge of the wave, hanging out on the front side. We may always be in the Now as Eckhart Tolle would say, but we can either live it hanging off the back end or riding the leading edge, wind in our faces, hair blowing, shouting, “Yeah baby!”

Miracles and the Law of Attraction

Tom Stine — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:03:39 +0000

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Leo over at Zen Habits wrote a post yesterday on the Law of Attraction, basically giving it a big thumbs down. Leo took a very interesting position: a very rational, western scientific perspective on accomplishing things in life.

My first response was to smile and laugh. I mean, for a site called Zen Habits, you would think there would be a little, well, Zen in his response. But no matter. I left a longish comment for him, kind of an off-the-cuff assortment of thoughts and ideas. Here it is:

“Very cool post. Interesting, too, coming as it does on a site called ZEN Habits. No, Zen doesn’t really have much to do with the Law of Attraction, so let’s not get sidetracked there. But let’s do consider that the ultimate foundation of Zen is Buddhism, and the Buddha had some pretty wild things to say about the world, our experience of it, it’s reality, etc.

“I won’t get into the details, but suffice it to say that if you delve into any school of Eastern thought, you will find ideas that are completely at odds with our typical, rationalistic world view. The world we look upon, so convinced of its utter reality, maybe isn’t as real as we think. So much that we believe in ultimately becomes so much ‘mumbo-jumbo.’ ”

“Look at the history of science itself. It is littered with the train wrecks of once ‘unassailable’ givens, things that were so incredibly obvious that you had to be a fool to question them.

credit: Mariano Kamp

“So, can I really think something into existence? Why not. Sure, I can’t prove I can, but then again, we can’t ‘prove’ much of science. That’s why scientists are usually pretty honest by calling things ‘theories’ and ‘hypotheses.’ Very few laws in science, but even those only rest on the simple fact that they’ve always occurred every time they are repeated.

“I guess my bottom line for you, Leo, is a simple question: do you believe in magic? Do you believe in miracles? Do you think that we really have a reasonable handle on what is true and what isn’t? While I’m not fan of the LOA and its devotees, I am a fan of miracles. I’m a fan of being incredibly surprised by the mystery of life that works in some really remarkable ways.

“Lastly, let me leave you with a fantastic statement by one of the most talented writers of the 20th century, Arthur C. Clarke:

“ ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’

“Think about it. Maybe we just haven’t worked out the technology of ‘magic.’ ”

And that was the end of my comment. Leo was really getting into the comments, so he responded quite quickly:

@Tom Stine, who wrote:

“I guess my bottom line for you, Leo, is a simple question: do you believe in magic? Do you believe in miracles? Do you think that we really have a reasonable handle on what is true and what isn’t?”‘

I certainly do believe in magic and miracles! It is almost impossible to be a parent, for example, and not believe in miracles. It’s hard to do a run at 5 a.m., and watch the sun turn a new day into a miracle, and not believe in magic. It’s hard to go through life, with your eyes and heart wide open, and not believe in magic and miracles.

However, I don’t think that means they are supernatural, meaning that they are outside the realm of science. I think science is just another way of looking at the same things. Is a child a miracle? Yes, I believe so … but a child can also be explained by science.

Is it a miracle when you overcome amazing odds, using the power of positive thinking, to achieve something incredible, as many people have? Absolutely! And yet, that doesn’t mean that science can’t explain it.

The problem comes, in my mind, when we take these miracles and come up with explanations for them that are totally unprovable, that have no real basis in reality, for no good reason, as is often done.

After reading Leo’s comments, I decided to post another comment in response. And I did. And guess what? Leo deleted it! I’ve never had the experience of being bounced before. How cool is that? I’m a radical fit for the delete key. I know the comment got left because a friend informed me that he read it via email (he was receiving follow-ups). Well, I saved the comment before I posted, so I have the comment in its entirety. You can judge how “evil” I was:

[Please note: after I posted this article, Leo wrote to say that he had not deleted my comment, but he couldn't find it, either. Obviously he had a technical snafu, not surprising, given the volume of comments he gets and inevitable glitches, etc. It was quite nice of him to leave a comment below. He's quite the stand-up guy, and I was a bit surprised that he would delete my comment in the first place. C'est la vie!]

“Leo, you made some good points. However, your reply left me thinking that you don’t really believe in miracles, the miraculous kind. You know, the person dying of cancer who does some spiritual ‘mumbo-jumbo’ for a few months and is completely healed, leaving her doctors stunned. The medical community calls it ’spontaneous remission’ but that’s a fancy word for ‘we have no idea what happened.’ That’s what the average person calls ‘a miracle.’

credit: Dom H UK

“As for me, give me water-into-wine, levitation (the Maharishi kind), spontaneous healing, blind men seeing, all the cool stuff you read about in Yogananda and other works. That’s my kind of miracle.

“Honestly, I don’t think that ’science’ is all it’s cracked up to be. Too many people have too much ‘faith’ in science. The scientific method has its limits. How do you study a phenomenon that might be beyond the mind, such as miracles? What do you use to study it? All science has at its disposal is the human mind. Miracles, the real kind, may be beyond the capabilities of science to explain.

“None of that means that they are supernatural or outside of reality in some way. I’m just questioning the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the totality of nature, the completeness of reality.

“Whether one wants to admit it or not, science is a belief system. The belief at the core goes something like ‘if we study something long enough using the ’scientific method’ then we will understand it.’ You can’t really prove that one wrong, can you? But it may in fact be wrong.

“And this is the type of thing that drives a decent number of physicists (you know, the quantum mechanics guys) to sound more Buddhist than a Buddhist.

“Again, the LOA may be right, may be wrong. But I suspect that most people, myself included, are more turned off by the salesmen for it and the Secret than anything else. They are a bit hard to swallow. And, for most people , the LOA just seems too hokie and simplistic to be believable. And it just might be wrong. And then again….

“Just some more thoughts for you Leo. Namaste.”

I invite you all to head over to Zen Habits and check out the post. It makes for fun reading. Well, actually, the best reading is in the comments. Some really good ones are there. A whole host of people showed-up to join in. Enjoy!

Love What Is

Tom Stine — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:04:28 +0000

I had a client once who asked me to explain further a comment I made to him during one of our sessions:

When you can for just this moment, just for this one moment, completely, utterly totally, beyond accept, love your experience right now, then you have the power to do something about it.

I have seen, in many contexts, the idea of accepting, allowing or welcoming one’s experience. It seems to me that this is a crucial step to letting go or healing any issue. But these terms, welcome, allow, accept, really don’t go far enough in my experience. They do help, but they don’t have the force, the utter radicalness that brings incredible freedom and power. The more radical approach for me is to love my experience.

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Let’s say that you experience a bit of hardship or unpleasantness, something like a break-up in a relationship. You are experiencing sadness, unhappiness, a sense of loss and rejection. The question I would often ask a client is “Could you accept or welcome the sense of rejection or loss?” This question helps the client to get in touch with the feeling, to experience it more fully. From there, it is possible to feel a spontaneous release or freedom around the feeling. And that is very good.

However, as I have discovered in my own experience, if you can go beyond welcoming or accepting, and actually go to loving the feeling, even more power is unleashed. For in the moment that you love something, you are saying in effect, “I am 100% happy with the way things are. I don’t need to change a thing.” And that seems to me to be the source of something miraculous. I think it was Eckhart Tolle truly means by The Power of Now.

The Surge of Peace

Every time I do this, no matter what it is I am loving, I feel an incredible surge of peace, happiness and well-being. It is truly remarkable. It goes far beyond feeling a little better about an issue. It transcends releasing or any other process. It feels as if I have activated some hidden power source deep within me, one that goes out into the world through me, liberating me and everything else from suffering.

I encouraged my client in this instance to go beyond just accepting his problem and feelings about it because of the incredible power of love. But it has to be genuine. It requires a bit of radical thinking. It requires a huge leap. Or maybe not. Maybe it just requires a willingness to see what truly is the Truth. The truth that love is all there is.

Loving What Is and Change

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Right about now you might be saying, “But Tom, I really do want to change an aspect of my life. How can loving something to the extent that I’m, in your words, ‘100% happy with the way things are,’ allow me to make changes in my life?” I’ve heard these questions before. The answer is quite simple, really. Nothing, repeat nothing can change if you first don’t accept it as it is, at least to some extent. And the more you can accept it, ie, go beyond acceptance and love it, the better.

Think about it: let’s say that you are wanting to lose weight. You’ve tried and tried, but to no avail. You have done everything, but nothing works. Why? The odds are pretty good that you are experiencing a massive internal conflict that is locking the weight in place. You are fighting reality. You are fighting life as it is right now. You are overweight. That’s reality. That’s the truth.

Subconsciously, you can almost hear the battle. “I hate being fat, I don’t like myself,” and on and on. And then there’s the other side: “I want to lose weight, I must lose weight, I should lose weight, I want to be thin!” Accepting things as they are drains the fight out of you. It weakens the battle. Your feelings relax, subside, and you feel more peaceful. And loving things as they are, well, it takes this process an order of magnitude further. The fight is gone, the battle forever done. You love yourself as you are. Nothing to change.

Change Can Be Effortless

My experience is that when I do this important step, change often just happens, with little effort on my part. Things simply improve. You might get on the scale and find that 10 pounds of anger and animosity has been shed from your system and your waist by shifting to love. Peace brings harmony and flow. I recall reading one time that “retained hate = overweight.” Could be, don’t you think? It is easy to see how this process would work if that were true.

So, pick an area of your life that is stuck. Look at it, examine how you are not loving things as they are. Make an effort to drop your criticisms, your judgments, your struggle against it. First accept, then move toward love. For now, simply identify what isn’t working and see how you are not being loving to things as they are. It will make a profound difference if you do nothing else. In future posts, I will talk more about how you can work this process on any issue.

In case you can’t tell, I love working with my clients and helping them to experience radical growth in their lives. I personally learn a great deal from them. I’m glad to be able to share this learning with you. Namaste.

Letting Go of Fear

Tom Stine — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:39:34 +0000

credit: Kables

I’ve been playing around with several ideas about fear for a few months now, and after sharing some of them with a few clients and friends, I feel at least one of them is ready for prime time. It is a very simple and easy way to let go of fear.

First, the Background Info

Whenever you are afraid, your mind is focused on something happening in the future. If you think about it, there is no fear without the future. For instance, if you are afraid of not being able to pay the bills at the end of the month, you are feeling fear about something in the future. Pretty obvious, eh?

But what about being confronted by something dangerous right now? What if I were confronted by a tiger in my backyard (yes, we have tigers roaming free here in Missouri *grins*)? Well, in the exact moment you see the tiger, and your body hits the adrenaline button, you are actually still not in danger at that instant. The fear you feel comes from what you believe is going to happen in the next few minutes, and yes, being eaten or mauled is a real possibility. But notice, it is still in the future. Even if you are being mauled, the fear you are experiencing is about dying in the future.

Okay, you get the point, right? Fear = future. No way around it.

Second, How Fear = Future Helps

So how does this fear = future help me? Ah, now we get to the entire point of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, and, for that matter, hundreds of other spiritual teachings. The bottom line to everything Tolle discusses is that there is only one moment, one time, and it is now. There is no future except to the mind (and no past, too). There is only right now. As a matter of fact, you can say there is no time at all. Just now, ever present now, infinite now.

And this simple fact that there is only now is great news. If you are experiencing fear about paying the bills, or a possible illness, or your marriage, or anything for that matter, all you have to do is remember there is no future, there is only now.

Third, The Practice

Using the above, here is a very simple practice you can do whenever you are feeling fear. Note for all the literalists out there: if you are feeling fear because a bus is about to hit you or a tiger is about to eat you, do not do this practice! Run, run like hell. Have some common sense, please!

Sit down. I’ve found that sitting down is the #1 thing to do when you are feeling any sort of distress. Just sit. You can easily take 15 minutes to sit.
Review your situation. Spend a moment or two reviewing your situation paying careful attention to how all of it is in the future. That’s the important part. All of it is in the future.
Be honest about your fears. Name them, say them out loud, write them down. You are already afraid, so you are already telling yourself these things in your mind. So be honest. You are afraid of going broke, of being homeless, of being alone, of dying. Again, notice that it all is in the future.
Fear = future. Repeat to yourself a few times that the fear you are feeling is about something in the future. Notice how all of these events are in the future.
“Is it here now?” Ask yourself, “Is any of this stuff here now? Is any of it what I’m experiencing now?” And sit with the answer. Don’t do anything with it. Just experience the answer. Give it a moment to sink down from your head through your body. Feel the answer.
Notice what is here now. You are sitting in a chair. You are doing this practice. You are quiet. Look at the room around you. Notice that the future you are imagining isn’t here. Allow yourself to sit with right now.
Sit for a few more minutes. Be still. Just enjoy the moment.

Fourth, The Benefits

Doing this practice has several benefits. The first benefit is that it slows you down, it takes a chunk of nervous energy out of your system. Your adrenal glands get a moment to relax, your heart calms down, your breathing slows, all good stuff for you. Because when your body calms down, it takes a further load off your nervous system. A nice cycle of physical calming occurs.

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The second benefit is that by relaxing your body and mind, you open yourself to knew possibilities. It seems to me that creativity is most active in the gap between thinking, in the pause that occurs when thinking stills for a moment. By getting your thoughts out of their imagined future, they naturally calm down, slow down, and at moments become very still.

And in this place of stillness you might have a new insight, a new burst of inspiration about your life and life situations. You may see a way to earn more money, reduce debt, feel a new found love for your partner, experience a sense of peace about your body and any illness it has. Solutions are often found right here in the stillness of now. You will surprise yourself with the creativity you will have when you are still.

The third benefit to you is that you will feel more connected with who you truly are. What you are is Now, is Presence, is here. When your thoughts are floating around in the imagined future, you are removed from the truth of who and what you are. Getting connected to the truth of your being is, well, the only way to go.

So give this practice a try next time you are feeling fear or anxiety. It will work wonders the more consistently you use it. Enjoy!

The Practical Side of All This Thought Stuff

Tom Stine — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:25:54 +0000

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I have a coaching client who has quite a bit of difficulty using his hands and arms due to a long-term problem of pain and stiffness. I frequently type notes for him during and after our sessions so he has a reminder of what we discussed, plus it is a good way to make certain he knows what he will be working on between sessions.

We’ve been working together for a while, and I have worked with him often on his beliefs about the various issues in his life. Obviously from my last few articles, I’ve had thoughts, beliefs and thinking on my mind of late, and during our coaching session last week, I said something to him about his thoughts and beliefs on a few subjects, and then I typed the following into my notes for him:

You will discover, if you are open to it, that much of what goes through your head, your thoughts and thinking, look suspiciously like the behaviors of a drug addict or alcoholic.

He pondered this statement for a day or two, and then he left me a message yesterday asking me to explain further what I meant by the above. I typed a response and sent it to him, explaining what I meant and why my emphasis on thoughts and feelings is helpful and extremely practical. He left me another message this morning begging me to post my response on my website because, in his words, “it was freaking brilliant and would help far more people than I could ever help by coaching alone.” Well, who am I to argue with a statement like that? So, here is what I wrote to him (with minor editing to preserve his privacy):

“Our minds, if we are honest, are quite obsessive. They get stuck on a topic and they keep going round and round and round about it. They don’t stop. Like an addict, they go back for another hit, another high, sticking with a subject or a belief until they literally fall apart from it. Just like an addict.

“We continually give energy to our thoughts by believing them to be true. We say, ‘Well, since I thought it, it must be true.’ But a touch of honesty reveals that most of what we think is no where near true. I would contend that none of it is true. It is all just mental noise, far removed from our actual moment to moment, minute to minute experience.

“So, what I’m encouraging you to do is to suck some of the energy out of the stories you tell yourself. That’s why I always emphasized working with your beliefs. Beliefs are stories. You only believe those things you don’t know to be 100% true. Do you have to believe in breathing? Do you have to believe in gravity? No. You may not know what gravity really is, or how breathing works, or whether gravity will be working tomorrow, but it seems to be the case that every time you jump, you come right back down. No believing really required.

“Let me be very blunt with you. You believe that you can’t make money because of your hands. We’ve discussed that many times. Do you have evidence even remotely as strong as gravity to justify this belief? Or did you decide at some point that it must be true? Do you see? You’ve repeated that story so much that if you will look, you will see that you are clinging to the belief that until your hands get better, you can’t earn money. But is it true? Is it real? Where’s the proof?

“And when you start to doubt your own beliefs, you will find that your creativity will skyrocket. Suddenly, things that seemed impossible start seeming possible. You have new prospects, new perspectives. But only when you question your old beliefs. This process is releasing in its most basic form. Real and true and deep Sedona Method releasing. Exactly what Lester Levenson did when he awaken and healed himself from terminal heart disease.

“Plus, as you shed these beliefs, your body will have a chance to relax. It will not be under so much constant mental stress. And who knows what good things might happen if you relaxed your body!

“Is this making more sense? Let me know….. Tom”

I’ve been thinking lately of writing more articles that focus on how to live from consciousness, spirituality, etc. Personally, I think that spirituality is the most practical approach to life and life’s issues. That’s why I work with people. That’s why I write. To help people with life’s ups and downs.

Spiritual awakening seems to me to be the absolute best solution to all of life’s problems and issues. It is difficult to explain, but it is truly amazing the relief that you feel when you start realizing that all of your problems are not a big deal because they aren’t your problems. Quite simply, there is no you to have them. They are just stuff, part of life, but they do not ultimately threaten who you truly are.

I encourage everyone reading this article to do what I encourage my clients to do: challenge your beliefs. Start to see that they are just thoughts, just ideas floating around they mind, and that they aren’t true and they certainly are not you. You will be surprised by what happens when you start to let all this stuff go. All I can say is, “magical.”

18 Random Thoughts About Thoughts and Thinking

Tom Stine — Thu, 08 May 2008 03:33:04 +0000

credit: Torley

How cool! Some of my regular and new readers are having a lot of fun commenting on my recent post, Are All Thoughts Untrue? I have quite a few responses to make, but I felt it would be more interesting to do another article on thoughts and toss in a little bit on thinking, too. So, here is a random series of thoughts on the subject of thoughts. (Personally, I find it hilarious that we have thoughts about thoughts and thinking.)

What are thoughts? They are sounds and images passing through awareness. In other words, the sounds you hear and pictures you see “in your head” are all there is to thought. The energy of thought then gets translated into the body and becomes feelings. And really, there is nothing more to it than that. I think. *grins*
“You can get more stinkin’ from thinkin’ than drinkin’.” The San Francisco sage Joe Miller had a cool way with words, didn’t he? Point well made. It seems clear to me that thinking has far more in common with an addiction than anything else. “Hi. My name’s Tom. And I’m a think-aholic.”
Who is thinking these thoughts? No one. That’s the ultimate rub of spirituality. The “who” you think you are isn’t. Don’t believe me? Go looking for yourself. In and of itself, that could be all the spiritual practice you need.

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Thinking is conditioned to the hilt. Whenever I studied psychology, I hated B.F. Skinner. I thought all that Behaviorist theory was nonsense. Well, old Burrhus was more right than I could have possibly imagined. Thoughts are incredibly conditioned by our environment. And we all know it, too. That’s why we say, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and, “You parent the way you were parented,” and lots of other expressions. We are heavily conditioned by our families, school, church, society, you name it. Until, well, you start letting it all go. And then what? Well, something else starts seeping in.
I seem to have no control over my thoughts. If I had control over my thoughts, I would be able to choose what I’m going to think. I can’t. I can say, “I’m going to think about the ocean,” and then a lovely image of the ocean enters my mind, I may even daydream about walking on the beach. But I didn’t choose the image I saw, the daydream about walking on the beach just popped into my head, and then I had a flash of memory about needing to buy bread at the store. And for that matter, why did I say to myself, “I’m going to think about the ocean.”? My thoughts seem to arise from nowhere.
We call the “place” where thoughts occur “the mind.” But where is the mind? What is the mind? Show me your mind! Or better still, go looking for it. Point to it. See it with your eyes, hear it with your ears, taste it, smell it, touch it. You can’t? Interesting, very interesting. I would say the mind is a concept about, well, more concepts (thoughts). But no more real than the man in the moon.
Our thoughts create our reality. True or false? A very popular belief in modern spirituality is that the sum total of all one’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs directly and accurately creates your world. Change your thinking, and you can change your life. You’ve seen The Secret, right? But, is this true? I haven’t a clue. At times it does seem like the world is a direct reflection of my thinking. At other times, the world seems to be exactly the opposite. Some would argue that the world reflects my subconscious thoughts. Maybe so. However….
Is there a subconscious? Everyone sure likes to believe that there are thoughts outside of our conscious awareness that “stick around” somehow or another. We call this collection of thoughts our subconscious mind. But is there one? No way to know, really. Because as soon as I become aware of a “subconscious thought,” that thought is now conscious and no longer a subconscious thought. It seems we use this idea of a subconscious to refer to those thoughts that seem to repeat themselves. But how can I be sure they repeat? Maybe they spontaneously generate anew each time. No way to know. Thoughts, ideas and beliefs are slippery, are they not?
We place our identity in our thoughts. We think we are our thoughts. And that’s the trouble. We are not our thoughts. Just for a moment, notice the thoughts you are thinking. Are they you? Do they tell you who you are? Or are you somehow “before” the thoughts? If you add up all your thoughts about yourself, do they really define who you are?
You are not who you think you are. Ramana Maharshi instructed people to look at their thoughts and see that they all arise from the I-thought, the one core thought that says, “I am all of this stuff I’ve been thinking.” But are you? If you investigate the I-thought, inquiry into “what am I?” and sit with this, you begin to realize that you are not the I-thought. And then it finally dawns: you are not who you think you are. You have been pretending. You are the Void, the Awareness, the Presence, the Nothing, the Emptiness, the Now that is prior to all thought. And that is the where the spiritual journey ends. And a new life begins.

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
As fate would have it, I read this bit of Shakespeare on a blog I love reading, Fake Steve Jobs (yeah, I’m a Mac fan). Perfect, just perfect: “the pale cast of thought.” Right on!
There is a difference between true and Truth. This one is a tough one, but I’ll give it a try. The Truth is, in my mind, synonymous with Reality or That Which Is. What is Reality? Good question. It is things as they truly are. And, I’m afraid, that is something that is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond the mind. That’s just all there is to it. We make a great attempt at describing it in words, but we really can’t. All we can do is point someone in the direction of Truth.
True with a small “t” is more akin to right or correct. And that is problematic in the world to say the least! What is right? What is correct? I have no answers to these questions. It seems to me that it might be better to ask, “What is helpful? What is useful?”
“Truth is true, and only Truth is true.” This line from A Course in Miracles gets it right.
Maybe the issue isn’t whether thoughts are true. Maybe the real issue is that we believe our thoughts. As one of my friends, Takuin, pointed out in his comments, “The problem is the belief in the thought…. The belief in the thought causes suffering. It is devilish and subtle, because the perceived problems seem real and we want to get away from them. But we can never get away because they only exist in our minds. And besides, who is it that wishes to escape? The believer that believes in the perceived problem.”
It seems to me that believing a thought is about the same as saying “the thought is true.” Not to quibble, but what is the difference?
Working with, “no thought is true,” has lead to greater peace and happiness. I can’t get away from this one. The more I identify thoughts that I have accepted as true (should I say “thoughts that I believe?”), and then question the truth of them, the happier and more peaceful I become. Doing so is a part of Byron Katie’s The Work, a technique that I like. I strongly feel that it leads to greater happiness and peace.
I still think no thought is true. There, I said it. It is, as one commenter, Evan, put it, overly simplistic and too absolutist. But, I still like it. It works for me. If anything, the above “thoughts” on thinking are enough to leave one confused.

So there you go. Some random thoughts. Honestly, as I mentioned in the last point, I can’t really make heads nor tails out of all this thinking stuff. It seems to be an experience we all have, thoughts entering our awareness, passing through consciousness, to be replaced by new and different thoughts. Constantly changing, constantly moving. All ephemeral and difficult to pin down.

Please feel free to leave your comments, thoughts, ideas, whatever, below. I look forward to seeing what the above brought up for you. Namaste.

Are All Thoughts Untrue?

Tom Stine — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:50:20 +0000

A friend of mine sent me the following in response to my article on the Adyashanti Retreat I recently attended:

Still chewing on your premise of not knowing that 2 + 2 will be 4 tomorrow. I have had some discussions with people who seem to be on the path but take it to a ridiculous extreme. For example, a friend of mine claimed the same kind of premise. I said o.k., let me light this lighter next to your arm. I believe based upon past experience and the rules of the world of illusion that you will burn. He said he couldn’t agree that he would burn. He couldn’t agree that the lighter would light. Conceded that may happen but given the fact we’ve both seen the lighter work, just worked and is not empty, it most likely will light. If it does light and placed next to your arm, your arm will most likely burn. One does not ‘know’ the future but can make reasonable predictions as to consequences of the world of illusion.

The world of the formless and the world of form are the same. One arises from another. They are connected. We should resist nothing and be open to everything but ignoring basic principles and observations that repeatedly occur could be done to an extreme and at one’s peril.

First, let me say that I completely agree that there are many people on the spiritual path who take things to ridiculous extremes. I have been one of them. Anything can be taken too far, and it is amazing the forms of trouble we can get ourselves into in spirituality. (Remind me to write about the time 18 years ago when I tried to live on sprouts and sunflower seeds!)

Let’s look, though, at the statement I made that my friend mentions. Here it is in its entirety:

I’ve had various discussions about thoughts with others on the path, and my experience at this retreat reinforced a viewpoint (or more appropriately, a knowingness) I have been taking more and more. And that is that all thoughts are untrue. Even the ones that have a semblance of truth, such as 2+2=4, are still not true. Oh, sure, 2+2=4 is useful, but even a “law” of nature could change tomorrow.

Everything in the world of form changes, or at the very least can change. If you ask me, “Will 2 plus 2 equal 4 tomorrow?” in all honesty I have to answer “I don’t know.” How can I know? The future is always The Unknown.

The Future

I’m going to answer my friend in two slightly unrelated ways. Let’s start by looking at the future. I think everyone will agree that we cannot know the future. Even people who seem to be able to predict the future via some psychic means are rarely so accurate that you would ever take them to the race track and bet on horses with your life savings. The future is the great unknown. As a matter of fact, we can even go so far as to say that the future doesn’t even exist.

credit: seier+seier+seier

How can I say the future doesn’t exist? Simple. Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you touch it, smell it, taste it? No, not at all. So where is the future? Ah, it is only a thought in the mind. There is no future other than as a thought. It can’t be experienced. Only what is here right now can ever be experienced. That’s why Eckhart Tolle called it The Power of Now. Because Now is all there is to time (you can follow the same line of argument to demolish the idea of a real, solid past).

Do you see, then, that it is literally conceivable that anything can happen? If the future is not only completely unknown, but moreover can never even be known because it doesn’t exist, then it becomes impossible to say that what I remember happening yesterday, or what I’m experiencing now, will continue to happen. As crazy as it sounds, gravity could stop working tomorrow. It might be pretty wild, pretty wacky, and almost surely the death of my human existence (and then again, maybe not!), but that is still a possibility. And not just an abstract, remote one. Anything can happen.

I know saying things like gravity may not work tomorrow or 2 + 2 may not equal 4 are extreme examples, but they are used to illustrate a point. We take for absolute certainty even far more mundane things than the laws of mathematics and science. For instance, every time you worry about what your spouse will say to you about the things you haven’t done, every time you feel fear about the shrinking of your bank account or the security of your job, you are accepting as true a thought about a future that is absolutely unreal because there is no future and no way to know what it would bring if it were real.

Actually, this truth that there is no future is the quickest, easiest way to undo fear. Without a future, you cannot be afraid. Fear is thinking that something is going to happen to you and the response in your body to that thought. Fear is sometimes referred to as a projection of our past (memories, which are more thoughts) onto the supposed future creating yet more thoughts. The body then responds to all this nervous system excitement by releasing adrenaline and a hundred other molecules into the blood. A very familiar process to most of us. But when you drop the notion of the future, you drop your fear. It really can be that simple.

credit: indigoprime

Daily Life

So let me anticipate my friend’s next question: “Okay, Tom, that’s all well and good, there is no future and no way to know if down will be up tomorrow. But how can one function in the world without believing in ‘basic principles and observations that repeatedly occur?’ You haven’t answered that yet. How can you not believe in 2 + 2 = 4 and still do math, balance your checkbook, etc.?” Alright, give me a second, I’m just warming-up!

While it is true that, as I stated, I can’t really believe anymore that 2 + 2 will always equal 4, the key point is that I’m losing all my belief in my thoughts as containing a single iota of truth. As has been said so many times, things like 2 + 2 = 4 are just concepts, simply thoughts that are removed from not only direct experience but also removed from the formless truth. Thoughts are ever changing, part of the world of form. Not bad, not good, just completely unreal.

It is my experience that as you open yourself to consciousness, as you become aware of your true identity as awareness itself, you quit believing in the contents of your mind. All this mental stuff, from the more mundane to the laws of the universe, begin to seem only to serve one primary function: to keep you believing that you literally are the contents of your mind. “I am what I think I am,” says the mind.

But as you awaken you begin to realize that you are not your thoughts. All of this mental stuff is simply the fairly random bursts of energy flowing through your body-mind. You begin to realize that you are the very awareness itself that has been always looking out of your eyes and listening through your ears.

As for daily living, it seems that I can function just fine without believing so strongly in the truth of things. To use my friends example, while I may not believe it is true that the flame from a lighter will burn me, I’m still not going to stick my hand in it. Why not? Because I have a memory that says it will burn me. And nothing inside me really has any interest in being burned. Not because it is afraid of the burning, but because it chooses not to be burned.

credit: Foxtongue

Moreover, having a memory of hot things burning me no longer produces the extreme fear or psychic drama that it used to produce. It seems just like a simple “fact” with which I can play along. The laws of the world thus become interesting thoughts with which to play. Without the drama, without my identity tied up in my thoughts, all of these thoughts become tools, at times useful, for existing in the world of form.

Another example of how this seems to work: I woke-up in the middle of the night and had this strong image in my mind of being drowned (I recalled a movie in which someone’s head was held underwater for a few minutes). I felt fear arise about it, but as I went with the image and experience, I could feel myself relaxing into the idea of drowning, feeling myself experiencing the body gasping for air, the last big of consciousness fading away and then dying, and all of this occurring with a sense of acceptance and peace.

As I sit typing these words, I can feel the same type of thing with regard to being burned by a flame. Intensely painful, yet unreal, too. I suppose I’m reacting this way because at a deeper level I realize that this body is not what I truly am. The thought crosses my mind that this burning is, too, a part of the One expressing itself in the world of form. Nothing is separate.

It may be the world of form and change and seemingly unreal, but my body-mind functions in it. The system seems to have some rules, and I seem to be following those rules. But I’m not really thinking about it. So much of this type of thing is just getting done without much, if any conscious thought. Which is cool. And, to be certain, I still have times when I get completely caught-up in the world of form and the thoughts that go through my mind. At times they seem very real and true. But then I recall the truth, something shifts, and all is well again.

To be honest, this not knowing if anything is true has left me to confront the startling truth that I really and truly do not know anything. I don’t know. That is my answer to so many things anymore. I guess it could have been the answer to my friend’s question, but I must confess it is more fun to play around with all these words and ideas and formulate an answer.

And the best thing is that as I’ve admitted more and more that I don’t know, I’ve begun to feel more peaceful than I ever have in my life. A fantastic peace is settling in that is most welcome. And there is a wordless, silent Presence that I have begun to truly, one that I am knowing more and more each day.

All of this seems to be the trajectory of spiritual awakening. There are moments of great opening to truth, experiences of formless bliss (or for some, formless terror), when lots of illusions fall from our minds and consciousness becomes aware of itself. And then there are times of going back and forth, from knowing what you are to getting somewhat lost again in thoughts and feelings and the world. And on and on it goes. Until it finally ceases entirely. Or maybe not.

You really never know, do you? Even ideas on spiritual awakening cannot be known with certainty . No matter who says them or how “enlightened” they are. But that is a different discussion for another day.

Adyashanti Retreat Report No. 2

Tom Stine — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:07:14 +0000

— Adyashanti

I finished my second 5 day retreat with Adyashanti last Friday, and I’d like to share with you my experience once again. I will follow the same basic format as the last report, so have fun doing a comparison between the two.

Purpose of the Retreat

As I mentioned in my last retreat report, the purpose of the retreat was to deepen one’s experience of Truth, to experience a true opening or moment of pure awareness, and to possibly experience an abiding awakening. Adyashanti is a big proponent of “awakening in this lifetime, if not now.”

Adyashanti

A middle class guy, he used to work as a machinist before he started the spiritual teacher gig. Serious student of Zen for 15 years. A talented speaker and teacher. A guy who likes playing poker. All these are descriptions of Adyashanti. And while I could list 20 more, none of them would even come close to explaining to you what he is like.

I was born a skeptic. I used to be quite judgmental, especially of what I would have called 20 years ago “that religious crap.” My mom taught me from a young age how to find fault in anything (God bless you, Mom!). While it is true that I have changed over the years, quite radically to be sure, I would like to think I’m probably somewhat immune to the whole guru-disciple relationship, or at least extremely uninterested in it. I’m still a touch skeptical.

And guess what? Adya has setup his teaching and organization to make something like that almost impossible. No ashram, no worshipping the guru, none of that. A very welcome change in the spiritual world. A model for others to emulate in my opinion.

This retreat was Adya’s first since returning to teaching after a 3 month absence due to illness. He was in rare form. He was funny, energized, extremely approachable during satsang, vibrant, alive. He was all of these things last December, to be sure, but this retreat everything was double. His time away served him well. He had 350 people laughing, deeply moved, and experiencing Presence.

Silence

The silence at this retreat was SILENCE. It was huge, palpable, intense at times. Alive and vibrant. I entered the retreat in a very different place than the last one, so this time I had a much deeper and richer experience of the true nature of Silence.

Indeed, it was a silent retreat in the conventional sense, which meant no communication of any sort from Sunday evening until Friday at 11:00 am. I love the silence. Very, very good for one’s soul (well, that is if one actually had a soul).

People

How could the people be any more wonderful? There were older women with long gray hair and “earthy” clothing. Young guys with shaved heads. Beautiful women to give the mind something to fixate upon. Ugly old guys with big bellies eating 2 or 3 desserts at dinner. There was no one type or even close.

The silence at this retreat was SILENCE. It was huge, palpable, intense at times. Alive and vibrant.

And then there was the star of the last evening’s satsang, the 12 Step Lady. She wasn’t trying to be funny, but her story, her demeanor, her comments, you name it, had everyone laughing uproariously. She could do stand-up. I can’t wait to get the recording of the retreat just to hear her again.

Finally, as there were a number of us from out of state, we got the experience of sharing a 10 passenger van for a 2 hour trip from San Jose International Airport to Monterey. What a great group who rode down and back together. We met for dinner after the retreat at a lovely Indian restaurant in San Jose. We came from Milwaukee, West Palm Beach, Charlottesville, VA, Barrington, RI, Chicago and of course Ozark, MO (yours truly). Blessings to all of you.

Schedule

Same as before. Meditate for 40 minutes at 7:30 a.m., breakfast, satsang with Adya from 10 a.m.-12 p.m., lunch, 3 meditations of 40 minutes each with 30 minute breaks in the afternoon, rest period, dinner, satsang with Adya from 7-8:45 p.m., final meditation, lights out at 10:00 p.m. We had 5 meditations for a total of over 3 hours of sitting each day. I often skipped 2 of the afternoon meditations because my back was killing me sitting in the meditation hall. I would go sit in one of the many funky old buildings, in a comfy chair in front of the fireplace and meditate or take a walk on the beach. Those times were amazing, lots of great moments sitting in silence watching the processes of my mind.

How I Spent My Days

I got up, meditated, ate, walked on the beach, sat, listened to Adya, slept at night. I did nothing else. No computer, no phone, no conversation. Just hours and hours of meditating and contemplating and sitting.

This retreat was a bit unique because I shared a room with a good friend of mine. And we spent 5 days actively ignoring each other! I tried my best to not look at him because the temptation to slap him on the back or crack a joke was high at times. He reported after the retreat that he had to consciously ignore me, too. It was great to talk with him afterwards, though, and compare experiences. He loved the retreat, too.

Location

credit: hortulus

Asilomar, you get better each time! The former YWCA camp turned conference center is right on the beach, and this time I couldn’t spend enough time walking down to Pebble Beach and listening to the sound of the surf. Between the beach, the incredible staff who skillfully accommodated 350 silent people, the good food and the funky old buildings, well, it is a perfect location for a retreat.

My Experience This Time Around

I will confess that I went to the retreat with a bit of a theme. I’ve learned over time that expectations can often be less than helpful, but fortunately for me, they did not get in the way. In a certain sense, I really didn’t have an expectation. More of a push in a certain direction. No matter; my bit of theme for the retreat was to deepen my experience of oneness. And, interestingly, I did.

From the moment I got on the shuttle from the airport I started experiencing reinforcement of a framework that I’ve found useful for looking at awakening. I first learned of this framework from Adyashanti, in fact, but I’ve run across it in other places. It is best seen in the following statement from Nisargadatta Maharaj:

When I look within and see that I am nothing,
that is wisdom.
When I look without and see that I am everything,
that is love.
And between these two, my life turns.

I will write an article at some point concerning my experiences with awakening, but suffice it to say that in this framework, I’ve looked within and seen that I am nothing. And so I wanted to go beyond what had been my limited tastes of oneness, of everything-ness. Well, I really shouldn’t say “I wanted to go beyond” but, well, you get the idea. There was something pulling me in that direction.

So, when I got on the shuttle, a woman I met had returned recently from India where she had spent 3 weeks at Oneness University. A long discussion ensued, naturally. When I mentioned a bit about my interest in oneness, she recommended a book to me by Arjuna Ardagh entitled Awakening to Oneness (you know I will buy it and read it, right?). And on and on it goes, oneness, oneness, oneness just flowing out of people’s mouths, Adya’s guided meditations, you name it.

When I look within and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom.
When I look without and see that I am everything, that is love.
And between these two, my life turns.

I dialogued with Adya on the first full day about some recent experiences I have had, and also on this theme of oneness, and he told me what I knew to be the case already: just let it happen. Story of my life (and yours, too, if you must know the truth). Just let it happen. It is inevitable. It is the way of all things. And so, something within me relaxed, and I started having the most sublime experiences of unity with people, things, feelings, locations, you name it. I simply let go, relaxed, and went with the fact that there is no difference between me and anything else other than what my thoughts say. And they are not true. Ever.

I’ve had various discussions about thoughts with others on the path, and my experience at this retreat reinforced a viewpoint (or more appropriately, a knowingness) I have been taking more and more. And that is that all thoughts are untrue. Even the ones that have a semblance of truth, such as 2+2=4, are still not true. Oh, sure, 2+2=4 is useful, but even a “law” of nature could change tomorrow.

Everything in the world of form changes, or at the very least can change. If you ask me, “Will 2 plus 2 equal 4 tomorrow?” in all honesty I have to answer “I don’t know.” How can I know? The future is always The Unknown. As I begin to see things more clearly, it appears to me that there is only one Truth not many, and this one Truth is beyond all words (although it is a lot of fun to attempt to discuss it with words). All else is supposition, believe, mind stuff. And thoroughly untrue. Even this viewpoint (see, lots of fun!).

Bowing

credit: Kanzeon Zen Center

Of course, I could go on and on with my experiences, but I will leave you with one curious thing that happened that has been a joyous relief to me. I live in a part of the US that is not the hippest place to be. We are a middle class, Midwestern place with strong Christian values. Folks like me are not that common. We also lack a strong professional class, and since Missouri State University is here, we have tons of middle class college kids running around. I hope I’m painting a fair and accurate picture. You probably can envision the place, right?

Given all the above, and given that I work at home, it is not that easy to meet “like minded people” where I live. In California, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but here, it is more like trying to catch a fish in a toxic lake. That has frustrated me over the years. I have lots of friends whom I love dearly, but I have longed to meet “my people.”

Well, guess what? Everyone is my people. And I learned this fact from a very simple action: bowing. Adyashanti spent 15 years studying Zen before he experienced his final awakening, so he flavors his retreats with a bit of Zen. And one of those flavorings is bowing. At the beginning of each meditation, we are encouraged to bow to our chairs, partly as a way to break the attachment to the “guru” up front by humbling oneself before an inanimate object that is just as “holy” as the holy man up front. Also, bowing to our chair is paying respect to our seat, the place where we will be supported (literally) in our meditations. In addition, we bowed twice at the end of every meditation.

I really got into the bowing on this retreat, and the thought came to me to bow to people whenever I was experiencing any sort of dissonance in their presence. It is amazing the feelings and thoughts that get generated even when people say absolutely nothing to you. Their gestures, their clothes, their jewelry, their hair(!) you name it, all can provoke reactions. But when I bowed, all reaction evaporated. I simply fell silent from the humble action of bowing in humility to what outwardly appears to be another person, but who in truth is the same as what I am.

Inwardly I started to experience a sense of “and them, too” as I bowed. They rarely if ever noticed my little bow, but I did. The sense of oneness grew deeper and deeper from doing so. And now that I’m at home, I’m still bowing. Bowing to the cashier at the grocery store, the farmer driving his truck way too slowly, my son, my ex, everyone I meet. What a blessing! People are so amazingly beautiful when you bow to them.

So you can see that this retreat was Tom’s Oneness Retreat. How nice, wouldn’t you say? That was the essence of everything that occurred for and to me. And I keep on bowing.

The $64,000 Question Yet Again: Did Tom awaken?

I asked this question at the end of the the last retreat report because several people at that retreat had said that they “came to the retreat hoping to awaken.” I gave a nice little answer to the question in the previous report, which was a good one for me at that time. But now, I have a different one:

What a silly question!

A better answer than that will be forthcoming. I need a few more days to sit and reflect and, well, be silent some more. But now I am seeing the question as completely irrelevant and, in point of fact, misguided. That would explain why those who go to retreats such as these hoping to awaken are most often disappointed.

But fortunately for me, I was not disappointed. I’m glad I went. Exceptionally glad. Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

11 Things I’ve Learned About Spirituality

Tom Stine — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:16:45 +0000

credit:
HAROLD PHOTOGRAPHX

Last week, I wrote an article listing 6 “mistakes” I had made on the spiritual journey. Being of reasonable intelligence (no comments, please!), it dawned on me that maybe I could do a follow-up article on what I’ve learned from spirituality. Admittedly, I learned from all my seeming mistakes, but this article will look at my learnings from a slightly more positive angle.

Warning: I’m going to take some shots at some deeply held spiritual ideas and beliefs. I can’t possibly explain some of what I’ve learned without them. Some of what you find under the heading of spirituality just doesn’t make much sense to me, or simply doesn’t seem to work. So, you’ve been warned. That said, in no particular order, here are 11 things that I’ve learned:

The entire spiritual journey is a journey to discover what you are. Who knew? Just because the enlightened ones for thousands of years have been telling us this one doesn’t mean I should have been listening, right? Over and over again I’ve head the message, but until the past few years I failed to pay any attention. “Find out first what you are.” That’s it. All the rest is a side dish.
I am not who I thought I was. For 43 years, I thought I was Tom Stine. Well, make that 41 years, because for the first 2 years I didn’t really think I was anyone. Around the age of 2 or so we start to believe we are Tom or Tina or Bob or Alice. But a funny thing happens when you actually start to do spiritual inquiry. You ask the question, “What am I?” You look within. And you inevitably arrive at some variation on “I don’t know.” Haven’t you been, in one form or another, haunted by that realization your whole life? Wasn’t that part of the utter agony of being a teenager, not knowing the answer to “What am I?” As I started to work with “What am I?” I found myself confronted by the obvious fact that when I look within I found nothing. And after a while, I started to accept that maybe this nothing I kept finding was in some way what I am. And then I experienced a great discovery: nothing isn’t just nothing. As one master said, “It’s the fullest nothing you’ll ever bump against.” And there it is: I’m not Tom, really. I’m much more than that. And you are much more than your persona, too.

The entire spiritual journey is a journey to discover what you are. Who knew?
The Truth is outside of the mind and cannot be found in the mind. That was a tough one to learn, but in the end, everyone has to learn it. You can never find out the truth by searching for it in your mind. The mind is contained in the truth. And the truth, the great spiritual truth that everyone is seeking, is that you are the everything, consciousness, Presence, the Void, God.
Thoughts might be useful at times, but most are not to be believed. Unfortunately, the vast majority of what I believe is not only false in terms of ultimate truth, but isn’t even true in a relative sense. I had to be honest: how many thousands of times had I believed a thought that passes through my head only to discover I was incredibly wrong? Pretty much every thought you have about why someone did or said something to you has been a complete disaster. “Mary yelled at me because she isn’t a nice person,” goes the thought, which ignores the 100 times Mary has been kind and generous. Sound familiar? Come on, be honest, your thinking is a disaster! 2+2=4? Useful at times. The rest? Garbage! The great cosmic joke. The less I believe my thoughts, the happier I am and the better life is.
Spiritual ideas and thoughts are useful but not the truth. This follows from the point above. We can discuss and debate spirituality until the cows come home but doing so won’t produce any truth. We have to experience the living splendor of the ideas and words. Until they come alive within you, they are symbols of symbols of Reality. When I got out of my head and down into my heart and gut, when the words started coming alive within me from hours of sitting and opening and letting go of my beliefs, then spirituality started to live and breath in me. That’s where it’s at. This relates to the point I was making in my previous article, What Is Spirituality? Really. Check it out.
Channeling. *sigh* I can’t do channeling any more. I tried valiantly, even going so far as to pretend that A Course in Miracles isn’t really a channeled book. But it is. Why don’t I care for channeling, you ask? Because channeling requires a lot of faith and willingness to believe in it. I don’t want to have to believe in any aspect of spirituality any more. Direct experience or nothing, thank you very much. Look at it this way: channeling requires that you have faith in the truthfulness of the channel. There’s no way to prove or disprove that the channel really is letting a 10,000 year old Lemurian come through them. The only choice, the way I see it, is to accept that the channeling is real, and that’s before you even get to the ideas the channel is stating. Too many evaluations for me. Moreover, some channels seem just a little too unstable for my taste. Apparently the channeled material hasn’t done them a whole lot of good. So, I prefer to take my spirituality straight-up, not through an intermediary. Please don’t misunderstand, none of what I’m saying means that channeled material is all garbage. Far from it. Some of it rings quite true. But I don’t really see it as necessary. If it works for you, fine, but again, I prefer my own direct experience. I don’t want to have to sort out the messenger as well as the message.

credit: loop_oh

Jesus, I love you, but did you really exist? By the same standards, I can’t accept Jesus or the Buddha as necessarily real, historical people. All we have are a bunch of stories written by their disciples and followers, and most of what is written wasn’t even written by eyewitnesses. Any historian worth his salt would cry foul at this point. Ah, but then there is faith, you say. You have to believe. Well, yes, but again, I like direct experience. I’ve benefited greatly from reading the words attributed to the Buddha and Jesus, but it is only as they have come alive within me that they have any real meaning or reality. This awakening within me has led me to believe that Jesus and the Buddha quite likely were historical figures, but I know it is merely a belief, nothing more. And just because my mind likes it and finds it fascinating doesn’t make it so.
There’s a lot of wild wacky stuff that is called “spirituality”. I’m sure to step on a few toes with this one, but, c’est la vie! Would you believe at the start of my spiritual journey, 18 years ago, I tried living on sprouts, nuts and dried fruit, in the winter, in hopes of enlightening myself? Yep, sure did. And all I managed to do was “lighten” myself by about 40 pounds! At least I got to eat like a hog when I finally realized that I was being, well, plain stupid. I could go on with plenty of other examples from my life and others, but you get the idea. Given that most spiritual growth occurs from living a fairly normal life with periods of meditation, contemplation or prayer thrown in then, well, eating sprouts or sticking crystals in various body cavities seems a little silly. But hey, it could be kinda fun!
Past lives have very little to do with right now, and right now is where it is at. I’ve been to a few psychics, some quite good. I’ve been told I was general in Napoleon’s army (I love France and speaking French), a prostitute (I guess because I like sex?) and a priest (no idea why this one). And in the end, knowing these things has been completely useless to me. As a matter of fact, all explanations in this vain have not helped me in the slightest on the spiritual journey. They are fun to play with, sure, but they haven’t contributed to my growth. I like what Adyashanti said in response to a question about past lives: “As near as I can tell, it seems like most people who remember past lives were at the foot of the cross when Jesus was crucified. There must have been few million people milling around.” If you do past lives, great, more power to you. But knowing a past life is really no more useful than knowing any other memory when it comes to the real “goal” of spirituality: awakening to the truth of what we are.

credit: David Paul Ohmer

Spiritual people are wonderful, beautiful, delightful people. I love spiritual people. I love accountants and doctors and lawyers, too (yes, even lawyers!). But I get a thorough kick out of the energy and aliveness that spiritual folks have. And not just Eastern or New Agey spiritual people. I love walking into a cathedral in Paris and feeling the energy that has been poured into it by millions of devoted, fervent prayers over the course of centuries. I love walking into just about any old church, for that matter. Even though some crazy stuff gets said in them, the spirit of the practitioners is wonderful to me. I’ve met some wonderful Baptists, Catholics, Buddhists, you name it.
Life is too much fun to take anything in spirituality too seriously, including all the above! I used to be so incredibly serious about this whole spirituality thing. I was dedicated, I was intense. Still am a little. But most of that has faded. Everything has gotten too funny to take too seriously. Far more fun to enjoy life. Not like a hedonist, but just enjoy the flow. I still sit a lot because I enjoy a good meditation. But it is lighter these days. And getting lighter and lighter the more I sit.

That should be enough for today. I could write 50 more, and expand on many of the above, though. I think once each month I will try to toss out a little list of things that I’ve learned on the spiritual journey.

Don’t miss the next list: subscribe to TomStine.com today. Thanks, I appreciate it.

6 “Mistakes” I’ve Made on the Spiritual Path

Tom Stine — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:18:56 +0000

Yes, I know, there are no mistakes on the spiritual journey. There can’t be, if you think about it. The spiritual journey is, to a certain extent, a process of learning. And don’t we almost always learn best from what we often see as our mistakes? But then, if we learn from them, if we grow from them, how could they really be mistakes?

As you venture down the spiritual path, you really start seeing your life as a long curriculum in a giant classroom called Life. No mistakes. Just your individual assignments. I have had my “lessons” to learn, my conditioning to undo.

That said, here are 6 things that I would have previously called mistakes. For me, they weren’t. But maybe you will see something in them that will help you as you journey down the path.

You cannot choose love too often. So many times along the path, I’ve been given the opportunity to choose love or fear. Many, many times I chose fear. I pushed people and things away to avoid loving them. I suffered, to be sure, and Life graciously came back and offered the lesson again and again. I’m very glad it did. Choose love.

credit: HaPe_Gera

You can’t sit too much. I loved meditating when I first started, but I loved reading about and talking about spirituality more. And reading and talking about spirituality, while they can be helpful, just doesn’t cut the mustard. Spirituality must be lived, it must be experienced. Sitting with yourself, finding out what you really are is so incredibly important and transformative.
Not enough time spent in nature. For centuries, spiritual masters have made references to nature, to time spent in nature, as a part of their journey. There is something about the trees, the rocks, the plants, the sky, the sun that calls to us. Being in nature is a powerful aid to our spiritual growth. Taking a walk in the pines will do more for you than a library full of books.
Being arrogant about my beliefs. I was a jerk in the early days of my journey. I was cocky, overly confident, and thought I knew it all. What a joke! The real truth of the matter is that I knew so little. By being so cocky, I rejected a lot of interesting and potentially helpful spiritual teachings along the way. I had to learn humility, almost by force. I’m truly grateful I did, because now I see so clearly how all the things I thought I knew were an obstacle of sorts to knowing the only thing that mattered: who I truly am.
Believing that feelings are reliable guides to behavior and truth. I’ve made lots of choices in life based upon how I feel, which is not a great idea, I’ve come to see. Feelings are just feelings. They are simply sensations in our bodies in response to our thoughts. They have something to teach us, for certain, but they aren’t the truth. For instance, every time you’ve experienced anxiety, you are afraid of something that is only in your mind. But you aren’t in eminent danger, and you aren’t going to die. Thus, anxiety is a poor guide for action. The only thing to do with feelings is to experience them and then let them go. Feelings want to be felt. Let the energy flow. As Hale Dwoskin of the Sedona Method likes to say: “Feelings are not true, they are not you, and you can let them go.”
Rejecting spiritual teachings before giving them a chance. This goes along with number 4 above. For instance, I hated The Secret when I first saw it. I was very agitated after watching it because I had a strong reaction to some of the “personalities” in it. They seemed so arrogant and, well, like used car salesmen. And so I rejected all the ideas in The Secret. Of course, I was being as arrogant as they seemed to be. There are good ideas in The Secret, and had I listened to some of them, I might have found a way to learn some lessons that I took over a year to learn the hard way.

I’ve found over the years that one of the best ways to learn and grow is from hearing other people’s stories, their successes and mistakes along the spiritual path. I would love to hear of your “mistakes” in the comments.

One mistake I won’t make: I won’t forget to ask you to subscribe to TomStine.com.

So What is Spirituality? Really.

Tom Stine — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:56:21 +0000

credit: mikefats

You would think that one of the first things I would do with a website focused on spirituality would be to write an article on “What is Spirituality?” At first thought, the answer is obvious. But sit for a few minutes trying to think of a sensible answer to that question and you discover that it isn’t as obvious as it seems. So what is spirituality? Really. Follow along as I think out loud and explore this one with you.

Some Definitions

Well, let’s start with the good old dictionary definition as we explore what is spirituality. Webster’s offers the following four entries:

Spirituality:

something that in ecclesiastical law belongs to the church or to a cleric as such

clergy

sensitivity or attachment to religious values

the quality or state of being spiritual

Hmm…. Not the most helpful definitions, save for number 4. So let’s check out Webster’s on spiritual:

Spiritual:

of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : incorporeal

of or relating to sacred matters b: ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal

concerned with religious values

related or joined in spirit

a: of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b: of, relating to, or involving spiritualism

Okay, I will follow one last definition, because it is important to our discussion:

Spirit: an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms.

What we can glean from the dictionary is that, for the most part, spirituality, in the more common viewpoint, is

something to do with church or religion OR
something to do with the non-material, non-observable world OR
something that is distinct from the physical world

For most people who give any thought to spirituality, I would guess that something along these lines would be their perspective. I know that it was mine. Spirituality seemed to be a subject separate and distinct from the rest of life, distinctly different from other topics. You know, topics such as career, relationships, health, etc. Spirituality had something to say about these subjects, but it is different somehow.

What About Alternative Spirituality?

credit: Tom Stine

Alternative spirituality is a curious term. However, it is necessary to use it or something similar in the United States since most of the activities that make-up spirituality look like some form of Christian church. Most of the spirituality in the US, as per the definitions above, looks like the Catholic, Baptist, Methodist or other churches.

Alternative spirituality is that big hodge-podge of spirit-oriented activities and beliefs that has flourished in the last 30 years. Everything from Advaita to Zen falls under this heading. Many people even make something spiritual out of acupuncture and yoga (which, in truth, would fall under the heading of Eastern spirituality, but in the US seems a bit more akin to martial arts or aerobics).

When I speak of spirituality, I usually mean something less like a Western religion and more like an Eastern one. In other words, I mean something more like alternative spirituality. Or do I? Let’s look at it some more.

My Spiritual Life

Spirituality and spiritual life are usually quite synonymous for most people. When they use the term my spiritual life, they usually mean that portion of their life that is focused upon something other than the material, day to day things. Depending upon your viewpoint, this could take the form of:

meditating,
chanting,
reading spiritual books (witness the Eckhart Tolle phenomenon on Oprah.com),
going to satsangs and meditation classes,
going to retreats or even yoga classes,
drumming circles,
Unity and other churches with a more alternative spiritual bent

You name it, and someone you know is probably doing it. All for the purpose of benefiting and supporting the spiritual life.

Doesn’t Spirituality Include the Material World, too?

In recent years, a lot of attention has been given to how the spiritual interacts with the physical world. Some schools of thought look at the world, and humans in particular, as a composition of the spiritual and material. You have been encouraged to take a holistic view of yourself as physical-mental-spiritual being, not just a physical one.

And with the popularity of writers such as Deepak Chopra and the smash hit The Secret, we have an ever broadening range of ideas and thoughts about how the spiritual and material worlds are related. We are often told that the spiritual world gives rise to the mental and physical worlds, and in the view of some, the mental gives rise to the physical world (the basic premise behind The Secret).

But Is Spirituality Any of These Things?

As I have journeyed further and further along the path, I must say that I’m inclined to say no, spirituality is nothing that I’ve discussed above. As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to see spirituality as, well, nothing at all. Spirituality, no matter how you define it or how you look at it, is a compartment that we attempt to use to separate out a portion of our lives from the rest. And thus we say things like “my spiritual life.”

But in reality, at least as I see it, we only have life. That’s it. Just life. There are no parts. There are no compartments. There is just me living my life now doing certain things, then me living my life now and possibly doing other things. Which are the spiritual things? Which are the non-spiritual things? You see, we have to invent a compartment to house things in, and what you may call spiritual I may not and vice versa.

Moreover, the highest and most revered “spiritual masters” have been telling us throughout time that everything is one. You name it, every spiritual tradition has a great one saying “everything you see and everything you experience and everyone you meet is the same as you.” So if this idea of oneness, as told by these spiritual legends, is true, then it makes this term “spirituality” seem even more empty and even unnecessary. If everything in my life is one, then doesn’t everything in my life become “spiritual”? Or, conversely, doesn’t everything in my life become non-spiritual?

credit: Cengiz C.

Spirituality, then, just becomes a term we use at times to describe certain aspects of life. It really isn’t a special thing, something noble or holy or grand. It isn’t even a true distinction about our lives. It is just a word. And for me, that’s about it. I’m letting go of spirituality in favor of living life. I may still meditate, attend church or satsang, go to a retreat and even talk about “spiritual” things, but I’m letting go of the belief that these things are in any way unique or special or different from “the rest of my life.” They are just what I do, and they are life.

So, I’m curious, my dear readers: does any of the above strike a cord with you? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Desire, Part 2: Is Desire a Bad Thing?

Tom Stine — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:30:40 +0000

credit: digiart2001

In my last article, Desire, Part 1: The Agony of Lack, I discussed how desire often creates agony, primarily because, as I saw it at the time I originally wrote that article a year ago, desire comes from a place of feeling empty, of lacking, of feeling an emptiness that we want to fill. I would like to go much further in this article, and I will begin with a reader’s comment that got the ball rolling on the subject of desire. It sparked a mini-debate that spurred me into thinking more about it.

So, let me begin with my reader’s comment:

I notice that the Sedona Method, in its sidebar ad, promises that you will “have all that you desire” if you follow it.

I’d like to call your attention to a posting I got this morning from Tricycle’s Daily Dharma: “When we contemplate suffering, we find we are contemplating desire, because suffering and desire are the same thing.” So, in Buddhist teaching, this “coaching” will increase suffering.

Any remarks?

What Is a Desire?

First, let’s look at what desire is. A desire is a feeling. Although in spiritual discussions it seems to be a much more potent force, when you boil it down to its essence, it is merely an experience of thought or belief in the body, and in every day language, that is a feeling. It is a feeling no different from fear, anger or sadness. It is the sensations that we experience in our bodies that gives all feelings their power. They aren’t merely thoughts that run through our minds but strong sensations running through or chest, gut, arms, legs, back and other body parts.

So, given that a desire is a feeling, it is therefore an experience that we have. In and of itself, a desire is really no big deal. Just like fear or anger or sadness is really no big deal as long as it is simply an experience. Think about it: have you ever been at a movie, one where you’ve really gotten into the story, and then something happens to a character and you strongly feel something? The main character gets dumped by her boyfriend, or finds his long-lost love, and a huge up-welling of feeling arises, such as sadness or joy. And there you are, crying, or smiling with joy, or scared silly, all because you are experiencing a reaction to the character on the screen.

A desire is a feeling.

For our discussion, this reaction is no big deal, has no real import at all, because it is just a feeling, and when the movie is over, the feeling ends. So, the bottom line is simply that experiencing a feeling is in and of itself no big deal. And therefore, the same should be true of a desire.

Desires Seem Big in Our Lives

But when you and I experience a feeling in every day life, or in specific the feeling called desire, the result is often a big deal. Not only do we experience the feeling or desire, but we become wrapped-up in it and start to suffer from it. Why? Because the feeling or desire isn’t connected with some make believe character on the screen, but instead is about you and me. It is personal. In effect, we have identified ourselves with the desire, we make it not only our own but literally us. It becomes a focus for who and what we are.

credit: Carol Mitchell

And it is this identification that is at the core of the problem of desire, the one the Buddha and Buddhists for centuries have been pointing toward. Identification is what the Buddhists mean by attachment to a desire or things. We attach and they become who we are. And this false identity, this belief in a separate self, is the cause of suffering. As a Buddhist teacher said, summarizing the Buddha’s teachings, “No self, no problem.”

I suspect that many Buddhists, including some important writers and teachers over the years, have missed this distinction. They have focused on the desires themselves and have attempted to do away with them. But desires can and do arise, at least in those of us who have not had the final realization. As a matter of fact, we have no more control over desires arising than we have over any other thought or feeling. We have no control at all. It becomes apparent, after spending any amount of time struggling with desires themselves, that it is pointless to try to suppress them.

As a matter of fact, we have no more control over desires arising than we have over any other thought or feeling.

Desires arise less and less the more we remove our identity from them. The state of freedom of desire is an end state, a by-product of awakening. It is not a path to awakening. When we suppress or deny the desires that arise, we give them strength because we are in effect declaring them real, important, meaningful. The far better approach is to let them arise, allow them their 15 minutes of fame in our consciousness, and then move on. They are simply feelings, and they will rise and fade if allowed to do so.

The Sedona Method and Desires

So how does this relate to The Sedona Method? The Sedona Method is a technique that at its core allows feelings to arise and then naturally release or be let go. It is a process that makes this natural flow conscious. And it works. It acknowledges that feelings are just feelings, that desires are just desires. In they come, out they go.

If a desire is persistent, if it sticks around, the Sedona Method offers techniques for working with those desires so that they are satisfied by changes in our outer circumstances. For instance, if a desire arises to earn more money, and after a bit of releasing work that desire still persists, then it can be worked with in a way that is honoring of our experience. Instead of fighting, we follow the lead of these persistent desires (assuming, of course, that they aren’t destructive to ourselves and others, but that is a whole other topic).

Let’s face it, we have no idea where our desires are ultimately arising from, so who are we to say that we should not honor ones that are persistent? Maybe they are the divine knocking at our door, helping us to see areas of our lives that we have been suppressing or hiding from.

I’ve read instances of people who experienced a dramatic realization of the truth only after they got out of their spiritual beliefs and honored their persistent longings and desires. Some have gone out and found a romantic partner, some left the monastery and got a job, and others started exercising or even, horror of horrors, started eating meat! They honored the feelings arising in them, gave that energy its due, and allowed themselves to act upon them. And the result was a complete harmony with the Truth of their being, an awakening.

Some have gone out and found a romantic partner, some left the monastery and got a job, and others started exercising or even, horror of horrors, started eating meat!

Moreover, another result of working on desires with the Sedona Method is that they inevitably change over time. I will admit, when I first worked with the Method, and looked at my desires with regard to money, I was definitely in the “make a million dollars” camp. As time has gone on, I’ve seen through that desire to what lies underneath: a desire for security and safety, for freedom to do as I please in the world.

As I have worked with these desires, I’ve ended up finding the work I enjoy doing most in the world, I’ve become more productive and helpful, and I’ve benefitted financially. And more importantly, these desires have faded and given way to a great sense of peace and knowing that all is well.

Spirituality and Marketing

Okay, now that I’ve given what I hope is a reasonable answer to my reader’s question, I will share one final thought on the subject of The Sedona Method, as well as all spiritually oriented systems of personal growth. So, let’s talk about marketing.

Like many spiritual types, I have had my share of difficulties with marketing and spirituality. While I’m perfectly fine with shiny, hype filled ads for Coca-Cola, iPods and Porsches, I have in the past had a real problem with marketing of anything connected with spirituality. When I first encountered the Sedona Method, for instance, my first thought was “what utter bullshit!”

But something brought me back to it, and I eventually started using it, and as time went on, I was cured of my distaste. Sure, a cynic could point out that I was cured because I started making money from the Sedona Method, but in the beginning, that was definitely not the case. No, to be honest, I started making money from it after I let the distaste go. For just like everything else, I had developed a set of beliefs around spirituality, and feelings attached to those beliefs, that when honestly looked at and released, faded into the ether. I was reacting to nothing, and now I see no objection to saying, “The Sedona Method can help you financially, help you with your relationships, and help you have all that you desire.” Of course, I would say the same thing about Buddhism, believe it or not. Not very “Buddhist,” but true nonetheless.

I invite more comments on this topic. It is a good one, and I would be happy to read your thoughts and opinions.

Adyashanti Retreat Report

Tom Stine — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 04:36:33 +0000

I attended a 5 day retreat with Adyashanti back in December, 2007, and I prepared the following report immediately afterwards. Reports like these about spiritual teachers and retreats are few and far between on the web, but since I find them to be quite helpful to me personally, I thought I would share my experience with a wider audience.

Purpose of the Retreat

The purpose of the retreat was to deepen one’s experience of Truth, to experience a true opening or moment of pure awareness, and to possibly experience a true awakening. Adyashanti is a big proponent of “awakening in this lifetime, if not now.”

Adyashanti

I’ve been quite excited about Adya and his teachings since last April. He has had a huge impact upon me. After this retreat, I can say that beyond question I have found someone that I would call my teacher if I actually wanted a spiritual teacher. He is completely my cup of tea. He is a regular guy, very down to earth, somewhat flippant, a bit radical, honest, incredibly personable. He speaks my language. He talks like a middle class guy who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s (he is 45). In fact, he is a middle class guy! His spiritual beginnings were in Zen, so there is a bit of a Zen flair to him: funky Buddhist shirts, stubble haircut, sits cross-legged in bare feet. But he speaks normally, more like he’s jawing with a couple of buddies on a Saturday afternoon, although he does quote a lot of Zen masters.

Is Adyashanti “the real deal”?

photo credit: emdot

For my money, yes, he is. There is nothing I can tell that is fake or phony about him. He feels very, very clean to me. Even cleaner than Hale Dwoskin (Sedona Method, for those not familiar) and Eckhart Tolle, both of whom are very genuine and real. I got the same message from others at the retreat (of course, we were all fairly biased). Nothing sticky about him that I can tell. I had come out to see him 3 weeks prior, and after arriving in California, the weekend intensive I was attending was cancelled (he was ill). That forced me to do a lot of letting go around my expectations of seeing him, etc., which was very good. So when the retreat started, I felt very open and available to whatever happened. Very few expectations.

We had an orientation the first night by the retreat leader, a few minutes of silent sitting, then Adya walked into the room. When he entered and started walking to the front, I felt like someone had turned on a 10,000 watt light bulb inside my head. I felt a tremendous surge of energy, of awareness, of LIGHT. It was incredible. I was buzzing for a few hours after that…. no, really a few days. The guy is transmitting some serious spiritual mojo. Something shifted in me for certain. I could really sense his presence the whole time. My personal intuition is that awake and enlightened are words that could be attached to him. Tricky words to use, yes, but I think he would deserve them.

Silence

This was a silent retreat. From the opening of meditation on Sunday to 11:00 am on Friday, no one spoke except to dialogue with Adya. We ate in silence, we experienced sharing a room in silence. Contrary to what most of my friends had predicted, I had a very easy time with it. I had to break silence a few times because of issues that arose, but I never just blew it. It was always a conscious choice at unavoidable times. Truly, keeping silence was amazing. I loved it. The opportunity to hear the chatter in my head, to get familiar with it, to experience it, and to see how thoroughly it wasn’t me, was perfect, an excellent practice in and of itself. Another benefit of silence was it eliminated any concerns of socializing. I would enter the dining hall, take the next available seat at the 10 person tables, and begin the dining process. I didn’t care who I sat by, who was at my table, anything. No pressures. Fantastic. Silence was a blessing, something to be cherished. It was a vital part of the experience.

photo credit: Liel Bomberg

People

I loved the people at the retreat. I got to speak with my roommate for a few hours before the retreat began. There were odd and funny parallels between us. I spoke with people on the shuttle to and from the airport, and at lunch on the last day. Great people. When they dialogued with Adya, they were so genuine and real. Very much like a Sedona Method retreat, and yet different. What a gift to be with 350 people who all are seeking to awaken. Yes, 350 people. We filled a very large hall for satsangs and meditation. I recognized at least 5 people from Sedona Method retreats, which was good.

Schedule

Meditate for 40 minutes at 7:30 a.m., breakfast, satsang with Adya from 10 a.m.-12 p.m., lunch, 3 meditations of 40 minutes each with 30 minute breaks in the afternoon, rest period, dinner, satsang with Adya from 7-8:45 p.m., final meditation, lights out at 10:00 p.m. We had 5 meditations for a total of over 3 hours of sitting each day. My spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. I often bagged 2 of the afternoon meditations because my back was killing me sitting in the meditation hall (yes, we even had chairs to sit on). I would go sit in one of the many funky old buildings, in a comfy chair, and meditate, or watch the trees sway in the wind, or take a walk. Those times were amazing, lots of great moments sitting in silence watching the processes of my mind.

How I spent my days

I got up, meditated, ate, walked, sat, lied down in the late afternoon, listened to Adya, slept at night. We did nothing else. No computer, no phone, no conversation. Just hours and hours of meditating and contemplating and sitting. The primary meditation instruction was to be still, to allow everything to simply be: every thought, feeling, experience, perception, everything. Just be. My mind would chatter like a squirrel at times. But I would sit. Rarely did I get bored.

Location

photo credit: juicylucymamma

Asilomar, a wonderful retreat and conference center near Monterey, California, with frontage on the ocean. Beautiful grounds, walkways among the sand dunes, wonderful old buildings to sit in and watch a fire in the many fireplaces. Huge dining hall, excellent, basic food (meat and veggie options), I really enjoyed the dining. We couldn’t talk, so we basically just sat and ate what we were fed. It was nice. I had a plate of food, I ate it, sat and drank tea, and allowed it to be enough. I never was hungry. I probably lost a few pounds of fat. I felt great.

My experience

Incredible. My understanding of my spirituality got deeper. I had some amazing experiences like the light on the first night. A few times I felt myself go to the very edge of my mind, really sitting and staring at the nothingness, feeling around the edges of my experience. Adya triggered some great insights into myself, understandings about what I’m about. I can’t wait to go back.

The $64,000 question: did Tom awaken?

In the conventional sense of the word, no, I didn’t. There was no bang!, you are now awake experience. While I have had experiences in the past that were more of a bang nature, the impact of this retreat has been much more lasting. One thing that Adya discusses a lot is that he has met far more people that slowly get their awakening than people who go bang!. He describes it as they get to a place where they just go, “well I’ll be damned!” From this retreat, I can say I’m at “well I’ll be d….” I’m on the edges of it. I can just feel it. Sense it. It is there, right there.

And here is the kicker: there is nothing I can really do to get “there”. Because the question isn’t really “did you awaken?”, the question is really “did that in you which is awake realize itself?” Who awakens, you see, is the most important question. Tom doesn’t. What Tom truly is does. But then again, it doesn’t either. It is already awake. I know, it is a seemingly big paradox. What we are, consciousness, awareness, presence, is already there. It is constantly moving toward a fuller understanding of itself, and that is what awakening really is: a fuller realization of itself through you and me. The little self, the ego, the mind, whatever you want to call it, isn’t real in the first place, so how can it wake up? And that only leaves the absolute reality, consciousness, but it is already awake. Paradox!! So, what I am is already awake. So is what you are. And awakening is just recognizing that it is so. Nisagardatta Maharaj said that his guru told him that he was the Supreme Reality, and he then just sat with that until he realized it completely to be True. That’s it.

Okay, so in a conventional sense, Tom didn’t awaken, but he is waking up. But so are you. We go together, you and I.